


Old Things

by shadowtriads



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Choo Choo! Here comes the pain train!, Darker tones overall, Hallucinations, Nightmares, Paranoia, Plot Twists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:48:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28428075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowtriads/pseuds/shadowtriads
Summary: Eramis thaws out from her prison of Stasis, and finds herself facing more consequences than she ever thought possible.Meanwhile, the Darkness continues to cling to her mind and wishes to aid her in the process.Set a month after the Beyond Light campaign and completion of the Deep Stone Crypt.Ignore the tag order, this is an Eramis centric fic and she's the main character.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 46





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone wanted me to write something where Eramis was happy.  
> So I didn't! :)  
> You may or may not find this gratuitously sad. I was going through a lot of things when this was written.
> 
> No idea what's going on with the tag order, I can't seem to rearrange it so it's a mess.  
> Please bear in mind that the content tags above are not exhaustive. I have omitted any that would apply to the second half of this work in order to protect / hide its contents. 
> 
> For maximum enjoyment, I recommend at least skim reading my previous work, Blind Fury, if you haven't already. This work stands by itself but does make reference to a few things in that fic - I assumed the audience overlap was going to be significant and wrote accordingly.
> 
> Single quote marks and normal text = Darkness speech  
> Single quote marks and italics = internal thoughts

A whisper pierced through the dark,

'Get up. No one will help you.'

Eramis cracked one eye open and took breath, cold air stinging at her lungs. The world was a blur, marred by a sharp edged black shape in the near distance against a mix of purples and whites. 

Her head throbbed like a hammer was taken to it, and white hot agony spread across her body. It wanted to rip her apart from the inside out, needle sharp against the numbness clinging to her limbs. Chest tightening with each breath, she pawed at her front with a lower hand to feel her heartbeats pumping out of time with one another. ' _I have to get up. Get moving. I can't die again._ '

Attempting to roll over and push herself up with the momentum, her body refused to co-operate. Her arms trembled as she tried to hold herself up, darkness tinging at the edge of her vision. Every slight change in position shot pain through her limbs until she had no choice but to fall again, gasping and shivering uncontrollably. Whether from the intense cold that gripped her body or the pain coursing inside, she couldn't tell.

'Whatever cannot hold on to existence does not deserve existence.' the whispers reminded her. 

Growling, she scraped her claws against the ground. ' _I will exist again. Where is Kridis? She said she would stay with me once the ritual was completed…_ ' They had an agreement. Several agreements, about what to do in the cases that either of them perished. Attempting to look around and verify that she was with her, her head spun and she had to shut her eyes once more as the platform swayed.

"Eramiskel?" A timid voice spoke up nearby.

Turning her head slowly, her vision swam and shifted, unable to distinguish the distorted figure as it came closer and looked down at her. Four bright blue eyes indicated it was Eliksni, but it took several seconds before her sight cleared and she saw a Dreg standing over her. His face was distantly familiar. Someone who stood guard during her public addresses to the House.

"You're alive," he breathed. "The cold dark released you!"

Cautious, she opened her secondary eye. The Dreg wasn't Kridis, and she had none within her ranks of spiritual followers. Unless she had shifted her standards in light of the disasters that had occurred, he wasn't who she wanted to see. "Who are you?" she rasped.

"I am a Dreg of House Salvation, Eramiskel, your House. Do you remember?" he spoke in earnest. 

She remembered everything. Her Council's warnings. The Glassway and its great portal. Waiting on the Young Wolf's arrival. Ice crackling along her limbs, breaking through her armor and into her carapace to travel through her nerves like thousands of knives locking her in place. Then there was nothing. No more whispers, or gunfire and battle cries. Just lonely, everlasting silence and dark. 

The Dreg chattered, anxiety shining in his eyes at her lack of response. "Do you need help?"

"No," she grunted. A Kell showing weakness in front of a Dreg was pathetic enough; accepting his help would blow his ego up to inconceivable levels. "Leave me." Hissing at the strain of moving one limb at a time to prop herself up, she gradually got to her feet, lurching at the first step forward and windmilling all four arms to regain her balance. The joints on her prosthetic legs were stiff, and she shook one ankle out and then the other to try and force them to unlock. 

Eramis dragged herself across the walkway, avoiding the frozen Ether-blood covering the metal grating. One misplaced step was all it would take to slip and fall into the depths below. As she glanced downward to check her footing, she furrowed her brow to note that her golden gauntlet, her tool to wield Stasis, had disappeared. ‘ _Where did it go? Did it shatter? Or was it consumed?_ ’

"Much has happened since you've been gone, Eramiskel," the Dreg interrupted her thoughts a second time. "Not all of it is good."

She shook her head, disorienting herself for a second. ' _Of course not all of it is good. Without my leadership or Council, they don't know what to do._ ' Coming to the triangular opening to her lair, she shuffled inside and welcomed the protection from the biting wind. 

"We have had some success. Some Lightbearers have met their final deaths because of us, and the city is still mostly secure." he continued.

"Good," his report offered some minor relief. She stepped carefully down the short staircase, taking it diagonally to avoid slipping and bowling into the holo-table just metres away. Her legs still shook from the effort, muscles weakened from weeks of inactivity.

"My crew is stable, and some of our Elites remain, although hidden from the front lines. After what happened to you, we had to exercise caution. We didn’t want to be consumed as you were."

"As I would expect," she arrived at the edge of the table and examined the orange tinted holographic display. It hadn't changed from when she last saw it, a reconstruction of the largest Pyramid ship on Europa hovering on the display. The air grew heavier just to gaze upon it, as if the Dark was pressing down on her very being in a further test of power. Her legs gave way without her permission. ' _No! Come on, stay standing!_ ' she scolded herself, unable to do anything but crumple against her will and sink to the floor under the pressure. 

"Eramiskel?" The Dreg rushed to her side. "I can get help, my Captain-"

"I said no!" she snapped, reaching an arm out to pull herself upright before slumping against the table from the effort. "I can do this on my own, without your pity." Although as soon as the words left her mouth, she wasn’t so sure. The Dark had a point to prove, but whatever the message was was unclear. No words accompanied the apparent threat, leaving her to struggle for a few seconds and glower up at the hologram before the pressure eased. Taking a moment and digging deep for strength, she learnt heavily on the structure to bend one leg and then the other beneath her to stand up and regain her composure. 

The Dreg hesitated, eventually sloping off to stand a respectful distance away at the other side of the table at her rejection. "May I tell you the worse news, my Kell?" he asked.

Eramis sighed, a sinking feeling starting in her stomach. The situation must have been desperate if the information was being shared by one of the lowest ranking members of her House. "Go on."

"House Salvation has broadly been slaughtered by Vex and machine-spawn. The Lightbearers wield your power as naturally as they do the Light. Even though they are small in numbers, their abilities are devastating. I came in search of a place to draw back to in case my crew required it, and found you instead."

Eramis clicked her mandibles, disappointed but not shocked. The second the Young Wolf set foot on Europa signalled the House's downfall, and it was no secret that her radio encoding had been cracked. Everyone who was anyone could listen in and hear reports of what was occurring in her territory, and Lightbearers were opportunistic at heart. Where there was treasure in the form of knowledge or loot to be gained, they were present. "How long have I been gone?"

"About a month."

' _Longer than it feels._ ' In her mind, House Salvation continuing to stand in spite of the efforts of the risen meant that a would-be-Kell had taken her place. Kridis and Atraks were the last two standing who would be eligible, and she trusted their judgements. Atraks was young and relatively unproven, but her conviction and ability to inspire a crowd rivalled Kridis’s. "Are you one of Kridis's followers?

"I- no, my Kell. She was...murdered. By the same Lightbearer who froze you,"

"Murdered? Don't lie to me, Dreg," she scowled. Nobody else could commune with the Dark as she could. Months of training and meditation would have gone to waste if she had been killed. "If we are having this conversation, then she has survived and completed the ritual. _Where_ is she?"

"No, it's true!" The Dreg cringed, bracing himself to be punished. "I'm sorry, Eramiskel. Nobody could save her, the Young Wolf fought her in front of where you were on the outlook!"

Her posture turned rigid, frozen in place as if the Dark had taken her again. A soul-rending hole tore open in her chest, sucking what little energy she had out of her body. There was no need to ask the Dreg to clarify - something deep within her heart told her he was correct. She gripped the edge of the table so hard that her claws scored lines in the glass, wishing for nothing more than the Young Wolf to be in front of her again so she could shatter his Ghost in front of him. Letting him prove himself in battle was a mistake that would weigh on her mind forever. 

Kridis saw the Dark for what it was, possessing unparalleled skill and talent in utilising the abilities it granted and understanding the true meaning of each message it gave. The Darkness showed her enough meaning to abandon all thoughts of worshipping the so-called Great Machine. It saw strength in her genuine belief, and she knew when to grasp its power. 

Not only that, but when she gave the call for any remaining Devils to join her new House, Kridis and Phyalks were the first to arrive. They had been through thick and thin over the centuries. To imagine a world without her constant, serene presence felt like losing an upper arm, a part so enmeshed that to think of life without her was an impossibility. 

"How did it happen?" she spoke quietly, halting. No part of her wanted to know, but taking revenge meant understanding the work of her enemy.

"She was going to resurrect you through a ritual, three weeks ago. The traitor, Variks, intercepted her comms and led the Lightbearer here, where they fought," the Dreg explained. He clicked the joints in his fingers anxiously before continuing. "She almost won. The battle was long. I didn't see it with my own eyes, but a survivor told us."

"With my own power?"

"No, with his void bow."

Eramis took a deep breath inwards to steady her anger, inhaling stale, freezing Ether. The Young Wolf probably thought it merciful to use the Light against her, and the mere consideration of what Variks thought he was achieving lit an inferno inside her hearts. It burned her to think of how benevolent they must have thought themselves to be, how righteous they felt they were to put a stop to business that never should have been theirs to involve themselves in. "And what of Atraks? Taniks?"

The Dreg averted his gaze, fear glittering in what she could see of his eyes.

"Tell me!"

"Dead. The Crypt was infiltrated. We tried to protect it-"

Eramis slammed her fist into the holo-table, splitting a crack across its surface. The image of the Pyramid flickered and disappeared, and the Dreg flinched backwards. His words were a gut punch. Taniks had a chance at rising from the ashes as he always did, for he was too angry and too stubborn to have his spirit quashed. But Atraks was young. Too young. She saw so much hope and power in the new House after her life was filled with the Devils' failures. Pride swelled warm in her chest when she volunteered to be transferred into the first stable Exominds. 

An Exo was immortal, immune to everything. In taking up the opportunity, she had ascended to what lesser Eliksni would call godhood. Not even that could have saved her. In one fell swoop, the Young Wolf had stolen everything she held close. The whispers spoke truth. No one was coming. Her dark empire had fallen. Without Kridis or Atraks, there was no point to continuing. Nobody could replace them. 

"If I may, My Kell, not all is lost, " the Dreg seemed to read her mind. "We still have many Eliksni who haven't filed to Earth to be with the Light Kell. Kridis believed in you. We all do, even the Dark. We would be honoured to fight at your side-"

"No," her voice was sharp. "There is nothing to fight for. Do as you want, but I will not lead this House again."

"But Kridis's prophecy?"

"It was false. I will not wield this power," she took hold of her necklace and yanked hard, snapping the fibre holding it together and dropping it on the table. “What has this given me but an unfathomable loss? It saw me as unfit to wield it. If I am not worthy, then no Eliksni is.”

The whispers cut through the air again. 

'Take this chance,' they said. 'You _can_ return in a storm of blood and ice.'

'Stop waiting.'

'Be your own salvation.'

Familiar words. Where they inspired action before, the aura rolling in waves from the shard repulsed her. It took her for the fool she was, chewed her up and spat her out to a dead House filled with weak Eliksni. Anyone of worth to her cause had been destroyed. There was no future on Europa, and terrifyingly, no future that she could see for her people. Nobody else was motivated or considerate enough to rescue the species from their own extinction. Focus on destroying the machine-god was fine in the name of keeping Eliksni together, but when convictions of the kind were skin-deep, any organisation would collapse. That was where her House and her hopes differed. 

"Who will Kell House Salvation in your absence?" the Dreg questioned.

"No one. Naming another Kell is fruitless without my visions. You wear banners claiming it, but you are no longer House Salvation. There is no salvation to live for." 

"Then...Do I tell my Captain that you've returned?"

She hissed. Her point had sailed entirely over his head. "You have not seen me. If I hear any word of my return around this system, I will personally scalp your carapace from your flesh. Tell them I was consumed. That I was shattered. Let them believe I perished and that nothing was left behind in the end."

"As you wish. I will ensure no-one finds out the truth.”

"Now go. Run to your Captain and tell them that Vex have overrun the area."

The Dreg bowed his head to her, skittering away and out of the door so fast that he lost his grip on the icy floor and stumbled through the far doorway rather than walked. 

Left alone, Eramis glared down at the Darkness shard on her broken necklace. Anger toiled like a dark cloud over her head, mixed with grief for not only her House, but anyone she cared for. Leading a new House, or even leading a crew in general was never an easy task, and it always came with heavy losses. She accepted and agreed with the Darkness that some would die from opening the portal and allowing Vex reinforcements on to her planet. Kridis, Atraks and Taniks’s potential to fail was never a consideration. Nor was their deaths. 

Dwelling on loss wasn't an activity she often partook in consciously. It crept up and enveloped her, promising comfort in retreading the same sad, tired paths in her mind. Shaking it off was like shrugging off cloying mud - it never truly left, and some part would always follow and become amalgamated with the next wave of grief. The accumulation of previous losses on top of her Council's destruction made it feel as if the waves were going to drag her under.

"My own salvation," she muttered, closing her claws around the broken necklace. "Means continuing without this." Swiping it up, she walked back to the outlook and over to the frozen remains of where she once stood, staring out at the Pyramid ship sitting like a tumour on the white wastes. 

It was imposing. Tempting. Pain like an ice pick stabbed into her temple to look at it, as if daring her to oppose it. Raising her broken necklace, she hesitated, mind drifting. Returning to its embrace would bring power. Her skills could be honed beyond what Kridis and the other Lightbearers had learned. The Young Wolf would know torture beyond all measures. He would wish he had met his final death in the face of a rematch. 

She would be stronger. A new House would be stronger. She would learn from previous mistakes and widen her net, inviting other species into her fold. Weaker willed Guardians who brandished her stolen power could be persuaded to fight for a better cause than protecting a silent, apathetic machine. Everything and anyone who stood against her would fall, and she would stay at the top and know nothing but peace at last.

' _No! This is how you failed the first time!_ ' She fought with the provocation, grip tightening around the necklace. Before the whispers could plant more seeds in her mind, she swung and hurled the shard with all her might into the ruined city below. It spun off into the distance, disappearing into the white fog.

The whispers quietened, near indecipherable yet very much audible. 

'You should have listened.'

'I showed you visions of their deaths. They were unworthy all along.'

'You were not. Rebuild.'

Eramis roared out of sheer frustration, clenching all four fists and storming back into the Watch. "Be quiet! What good have you done?! Everything I worked for is lost because of your ideas filling my head!"

'Misplaced blame.'

'Find the real enemies.'

"You _are_ my real enemy," she shook her head, clicking her mandibles out of irritation as she paced down the steps and towards a side door. If the voices didn't quiet, she feared she might crack her skull open and remove her brain in an attempt to make them stop. "I cannot stay here. Distance. I need distance, somewhere where the Pyramids are not."

'Take my suggestions. Then, I may leave.'

Eramis laughed bitterly to herself. "How many times have I heard that before?" It was always one more step, one more thing to do for someone and they would be out of her hair. If she were more naive and unaware of the lies that could be told to string others along, she would almost believe the voices. 

'Find the real enemies.' they repeated.

She grumbled. There were many enemies. At the top of the pile was the Young Wolf. Below him was Variks. A traitor. A thief. All manner of insults could be applied to his name, and they would all ring true. She knew him well enough to guess that he hadn't moved from his base in Charon's Crossing, unmoving from his post unless explicitly told he could. Europa was far enough from both the Reef and Earth that it created a sort of security buffer around himself. That was one of the many reasons why he was enticed by her offer, a year and a half prior. Both sides could declare him a prisoner if they chose, but neither would while he once more played the role of a meek servant.

She could do what they would not. If neither side was brave enough to imprison or kill him, then she would take the privilege from them. After she extracted the information she needed. His keeping tabs on most Eliksni in the system was a benefit for more than recruitment purposes, and he could be fooled into giving away sensitive information. She could kill _three_ birds with one stone - discover what he knew about his involvement in the death of her House, find what he knew about the state of their people at large, and then eviscerate him following his confessions. Docking was too good for him. Removing all his arms and legs was too kind. He needed to die, and she needed to watch the light fade from his eyes as he floundered.

Freezing him from the inside out as she experienced would be a sight and sensation to behold, one that would rock her to sleep in its embrace. She would be his judgement. Flexing her dominant hand into a fist and grimacing at her frostbitten claws, she realized that throwing the Darkness splinter into the abyss was an error after all, denying herself an opportunity she craved. Turning around to dig through the ruined city far below was a non-starter, though, and without the gauntlet Praksis designed, she wasn't sure how to harness Stasis. Had he not interfered, Kridis could have taught her and shared the further secrets she uncovered about the Dark and how to manipulate its power. 

Besides that, Eliksni had perished by her own claws and weapons hundreds of times before without its assistance. Thinking of Variks falling before the power he scorned was an image she would savour, but nothing would be sweeter than the honour of killing him and avenging her Council with her own four hands. 

"He will know my pain," she said, sweeping down the hall with renewed anger. "All of them will. I will not return in the storm they think, but the one they deserve."


	2. Chapter 2

Eramis staggered through the hangar entrance in the Eventide Ruins, leaning against the doorway as she caught her breath. Her sword dripped with radiolaria fluid, and evacuation alarms wailed from the fallen city. 

"Why did I open the portal?" she panted, light headed and dizzy from the exertion of combat. "What were you _thinking_ , Eramis?"

Vex crawled through every inch of Riis-Reborn, outnumbering the Eliksni crews she caught roaming on patrols through the area by dozens. They were docile enough if one could sneak past them and evade registering on their sensors, but they marched with mindless, unstoppable intent. Using the hidden paths, ventilation systems and maintenance catwalks provided a means to remaining unseen, but the Vex had broken through into every area that the Lightbearers had no access to. With no stealth drive installed into her armor, no vehicles available, and the threat of being spotted by her own House or a wandering Lightbearer, it left her with no choice but to fight through on foot in order to find a Skiff to escape the moon.

Moving the remaining Eliksni was as simple as triggering the alarm system and staying out of sight while they ran away, but the machines had no concept of what the grating noises meant. She wasn't sure whether they were capable of hearing or not. They functioned like the predator-birds of Earth, static until something caught their eye and kick-started their offensive functions. The vast expanses of her home were never grand in terms of decoration, but the radiant white liquid spilled and mechanical parts littering most of the floors as she tore through their ranks at the points she couldn’t avoid them did nothing for improving its appearance.

Equally, she didn't need to look down at herself to know she was filthy, covered in oil, radiolaria, dust and damp from melted snow. Every part of her body screamed for relief after fighting through Goblins and Minotaurs with a sword that wasn't her own, unbalanced and heavy in her hand. Fear of stopping for even a moment pushed forwards, though, believing it to be the difference between escaping unseen and being intercepted.

Dragging herself away from the door and across to a workbench, she took up an old rag to wipe the blade down. Her hand tingled as the fluid soaked through the fabric, and she tried to pay it no mind. It was either from the radiolaria or frostbite setting in, and neither of those answers were good. Turning her attention to the rest of the hangar instead, she frowned at its emptiness where it was once filled to the brim. A shambolic row of Pikes in various states of disrepair cluttered up the far corner, and a single Skiff remained beside them. The latter was covered by a layer of ice several inches thick, freezing the loading ramp and drop-points over. 

Variks's spies were too efficient for their own good. She held no doubt in her mind that they had stolen and shared the passwords for the security protocols keeping her fleet of Skiffs from being flown, and she also didn't doubt that some ‘loyal’ members of her House had defected in the chaos of the Young Wolf’s arrival to take a ship off-planet to safety. The truth didn't matter ultimately. No matter what way she looked at it, Variks was the winner. For some reason, everyone had forgotten his past crimes, alongside his most recent sin of releasing every single criminal in the system. He got his human-bonds back and was favoured once again. 

She got a collection of dead friends, a lost House, a lost planet, a lost power, and brought low to the point of stealing one of her own ships. The only thing more humiliating than having to break into one of her own Skiffs would have been to be spotted and captured by a Lightbearer wanting to prove themselves. Little else was more insufferable than a Dreg clamouring for attention, but certain types of machine-spawn beat them by a mile. Thankfully, they had yet to break through into the direct pathways between the rough city blocks, and they had no idea of how to access the hangars and storage units on the back roads of the Ruins. All they could do was skirt around its exterior like insects. If any were nearby, they would have started fighting with the Eliksni fleeing the alarms. 

Sheathing the sword back at her hip once clean, she careered over to the remaining Skiff, stumbling and catching herself against it with one hand. Her claws dug into the ice, and as she ran her fingers over its surface it dawned on her that it was thick enough to hold her weight. Even if the ramp was impassable, the emergency exit hatch on top of the hull might have escaped the same fate as the rest of the vessel.

Eramis jumped and launched herself up onto the ice, scrambling up to the top of the Skiff and sliding across the cockpit until she located the hatch. Thankfully, the ice over it shattered with a swift bash, and she took her blade and ran it around the edge of the opening. The tip of it slipped into a gap, and she levered the sword back and forth until the hatch gave way and popped open. Throwing the weapon to the ground below, she lifted the door up to slide inside and drop down into the ship, closing the hatch behind her as she went. 

Eyes adjusting to the pitch black interior, she felt her way to the navigation console and crouched in front of it to tear the maintenance panel off its front. Fishing inside for bundles of wires, she pulled them out from their connectors with a practiced care. Her hands moved on autopilot to strip the wires down and connect the ignition bundles together. Electrical currents started to whistle as the console flashed on, and she bent an arm upwards to get at the screen to enter her master key. Connecting the starter wires together, they sparked and the engines engaged instantaneously, rumbling noise filling the empty hangar. 

Standing up quickly, she yanked the control stick hard to unlock it, pushing the throttle forwards in the same movement to keep what little momentum it had gained on its own going. The ship mounted and turned, juddering after being left untouched and exposed to the elements for weeks. 

She willed it to keep moving, making a face at the console screens flickering and the emergency lighting turning on. Seconds later, the Skiff stuttered, stalling and slamming down into the ground. 

"For fuck's sake!" The human curse was significantly more satisfying than anything in Eliksni. Thrown to the floor, Eramis clawed back up to hiss at the screen and its tinny beeping coming from the built in speakers. A demand for repairs flashed at her, listing off all the damaged components in one long list. Entering her passcode once more to override the errors, the engines came back online and it rose up again, creaking and whining in complaint from the sudden drop. 

She disabled the transponders and telemetry to divert every last slither of energy to the engines, swapping to the navigation system and throwing her hands in the air when it refused to chart a course by itself. "Useless piece of junk." she snapped, enabling the cloaking drives with one swipe and driving out of the hangar manually. While not a major inconvenience that the ship had to be controlled without any autopilot or interstellar positioning system, it left her blind to any dangers in the immediate area. Skiffs weren’t known for their wide fields of view, and her narrowed vision through only two eyes worsened the problem. 

Crawling out from the Ruins and into the open sky at a snail's pace, debris falling from the air in front of her flight path caught her attention. Broken pieces of metal and what seemed to be the fuselage of a spacecraft came down in orange flame, partially burning up in the atmosphere before slamming into the snow and exploding below. “Where is that coming from?” she leant forward and peered into the sky, grimacing. Something traveling at that velocity would break through the Skiff's shields like they didn’t exist.

Aside from the black scorch marks littering the ridges and cliffs, her territory appeared to be intact. As expected, Vex and Lightbearers alike wandered across the wastes, although in fewer numbers than she thought. The Dreg made it sound as if armies had descended upon their home, when in reality it was a handful of individuals spread over miles of land. Where forces clashed, the occasional flash of solar and arc energies sparked bright against the white, and the telltale dark blue protrusions of Stasis crystals rolled out from one Lightbearer as they tangled with a Wyvern. 

While the problem of Lightbearers being on Europa wasn't as significant as it appeared, all the wrong types had access to her powers. All because of Variks. She knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t care for what he had done. It was always about him and his safety. He was so self-absorbed - although she was self-aware enough to accept that she was as well. It was why they ended up becoming friends in the first place, centuries ago. Great minds thought alike. 

She admired his calculating nature and how ruthless he could be, until he turned on her and allowed her to be trapped in his own prison. When he didn’t come to speak to her until she had been behind the four walls of her cell for three months, she considered their friendship over. The next decades were spent quietly watching what her permitted, making mental notes to never forget the torture and depravity permitted by him personally in the Prison. 

Extending the offer of safety under House Salvation was supposed to turn a new leaf between them. Certain Eliksni deserved a chance to redeem themselves, and she thought him the ideal candidate to an extent - aside from needing his skills in scribing. In hindsight, she wished she could go back to her past self, take her by the shoulders, and direct herself and Variks to the nearest Skiff to dump him on the Vanguard's doorstep while he was still a wanted criminal. He could blab about her city on Europa, but bloodthirsty machine-spawn wanted revenge for their precious Cayde-6. Up until the previous month, he was a perfect punching bag. 

If she weren’t so certain that the Vanguard would kill her on sight and allow him to continue his nefarious, two-faced scheming, she had half a mind to collect him up and unload all the blackmail she had on him to any Guardian who would listen, parading him around the system in shame.

Eramis continued to guide the Skiff over the expanses of Cadmus Ridge, minutes passing in seconds. The giant satellite dish perched on Variks’s makeshift base came into view, and she wheeled her Skiff away from it and towards the canyon to hover in place a short walk from it. Praying that the engines would stay relatively quiet and the ship wouldn't join the debris in falling from the sky while she was gone, she engaged the transmat system. It flashed online for a few seconds before failing, indicating that it was half-functioning. Leaving the Skiff through it wasn't going to happen, but her portable link and the pad seemed to communicate. She rolled her eyes at the ship's predictability. ' _I have to do everything myself._ '

Opening the door to the back half of the ship, she deployed the drop hooks and marched to the first one that unfurled. Sliding down its length and swinging out, she dropped into the snow and rolled to break the impact from the fall, staying crouched while she scanned the area for onlookers. When none made themselves obvious, Eramis stood and started up the path to the Crossing. 

As she approached, bright colours and lights from inside his base gave her pause. From the outside looking in through the frost covered window, it appeared as if Variks had been enshrined. Pieces of paper were pinned all over his workspace, some being notes in poorly written Eliksni, others in English, and a select few crude drawings. Various human trinkets and 'prizes' surrounded him, alongside what looked like stacks of containers with the House Judgment symbol by his lower hand. Cookie containers, if she recalled correctly. In spite of how his sanctum was decorated, he still wore the same ragged robes with faded blue dye in patches, and the fur on his mantle was matted. Why he didn’t take better care of himself was beyond her - except it also wasn’t. Every interaction was a game to him, and he was winning when it came to racking up pity points. 

Making her way into the base and checking over both shoulders again, she stopped at the sight of a snow-Eliksni beside a pillar. Four bright blue gemstones made up its eyes, and Variks's detached prosthetic arm was in place of one of its own. A tattered Salvation banner had been turned into a scarf for its 'neck' where the head and body connected, and a broken shock pistol lay on the floor beside it, presumably once balanced in one twig-arm.

She despaired at how fickle humans could be. Two years was not a long time for either of their species, yet it was seemingly long enough to take an about turn and forgive the perpetrator of the largest prison break in known galactic history. And to make clumsy snow sculptures out of him in the banners of the House he betrayed, no less. She gave it a hard glare before continuing on. 

Moving forward into the sensors of the steel door he hid behind, she let it open in front of her before leaning inside and rapping her knuckles against the wall.

Variks raised his head, doing a double take and squawking as he visibly jumped back from his console. His eyes went wild, frightful. "Eramis?!"

"Variks," she replied evenly, stepping out of the way to allow the doors to shift closed. 

Tense silence filled the air as Variks searched for his words. She pushed down the urge to rip the rest of his limbs off and take revenge for Kridis while he was preoccupied, taking all the patience she had left to wait for him to speak.

His voice sounded close to shaking in anger when he finally did, "What did you _do_?!" 

"I ask myself the same question," she drawled in English. "Although for different reasons than you."

"Eliksni do not come back to life with no explanation. Who completed the ritual?"

"No one. Your pawn left me on the outlook and didn't shatter me. The Darkness saw another purpose to my existence and thawed me out. Does that satisfy your curiosity?" she sneered.

"You should not be here."

"And you shouldn't still be missing an arm after more than a month. How pathetic," she said, slightly amused that the Guardians would do everything for him except bring him a new arm. It wasn't outside of their capabilities in the slightest. "Have you been telling them that you're unworthy of the privilege, and still acting like a Dreg?"

His gaze turned as cold as the power she once wielded, chittering in displeasure at her.

"Look at you," she laughed at his determination as she closed in on him. In a way, it was adorable to see how his courage had grown in her absence. Almost like he thought himself of some importance. "You never looked me in the eye before."

"What do you want."

"Answers."

"Variks has nothing to share with you," he shook himself out and narrowed his eyes. "You already know."

"I know you were responsible for killing Kridis."

"Allowing her to complete the ritual and resurrect you would have wrought havoc on this world. Variks had to stop her. Bound by duty."

"Ah, yes, of course, duty to the same beings who would turn on you in a heartbeat if someone revealed exactly how many Lightbearers you allowed to meet their final deaths in your televised bloodsport." Eramis replied.

"Why would you tell them?"

"Because you took my oldest friend from me."

"You were not meant to find out."

"Perhaps, but I did. And now it's your problem. What will you do, kill me again?"

"Don't tempt Variks," his hand drifted towards the microphone set to his side, resting beside it. A threat.

"You must think yourself like your machine-god. Anything you point and protest at dies at your behest thanks to an army of unquestioning pawns. Do you enjoy that leverage over others? A Dreg with the powers of a Kell?" she spat, raging anger burning with renewed heat to hear his feeble excuses. "All of my Council would still be with me if it weren't for you, snake!"

"I have no regrets. Their deaths were sad, but...necessary," he replied. "In a world where Darkness had not tempted you, things would have been different. They would have lived."

Eramis lashed out and grabbed him by the throat, slamming him down against the communications console with a snarl. It took every ounce of restraint she possessed to not lift him and break his skull on it. His helmet was brittle, and he himself had grown thin and frail. One hard smack against a solid surface, and it would be over. "You don't know what you're talking about." 

Variks grunted, his metallic upper hand clasping around her arm. “I know enough. The Dark changed you. Just because I aided in their deaths does not mean I do not mourn them.”

“Now you admit to the part you played? Only when my hand is around your throat and you fear I might kill you and avenge their deaths do you back off and take the blame?” she snapped. “I _hate you._ You are a black mark against the name of the Eliksni, and by the time my death comes, every system from here to Andromeda will know of your sins.”

" _Your_ chains are showing, Eramis," Variks imitated her, glaring with a hardness she had never seen him possess in her lifetime. "Kill Variks, and see if that calms you. It will not change a thing."

"It will change more than you could ever understand," she tightened her grip and raised him up. Before she could drive him downwards, images cut through her mind like a lightning strike. Lightbearers rushing through the doors, weapons blazing at her back. Prison walls, shackles digging into her wrists, interrogations, her weakened form starved of Ether until she surrendered. A plaything of the City, co-operating or dancing with death.

The whispers hissed throughout,

'He has more to give.'

'Kill him when they forget.'

Blinking back to reality, she found Variks struggling in her hold, wheezing and flailing. His claws had pierced her suit, embedded into the shell covering her forearm. As much of a hindrance as they could be, listening to the whispers was often a wise notion, and the waking visions seldom showed anything but the truth.

She threw him down, letting him collapse in a heap. Composing herself enough to speak, her voice was like ice, "I did what was right. No matter the consequences, you will not blame their deaths on my actions when they were caused by _your_ betrayal."

Variks wheezed, getting to his feet in an un-coordinated mess. It was pitiful enough that she almost felt compelled to help him, choosing to revel instead in his struggle. It was as good as she felt she would get for a long time. Once upright, he rubbed his neck, wiping away the blood that seeped out from the puncture wounds. "However you see it." 

Eramis shook her head and chattered in frustration. Even a near death experience didn't quash his attitude. "Enough of this. I need your database."

"For what purpose?" Variks asked, wary. 

"To find who's left among us."

"I see no reason to give access to a traitor," he clicked at her in the strange way he did that appealed to the humans. "Prove yourself to me, that I can trust you."

"Variks, we're _both_ traitors!" she erupted again, exasperated. "Excluding me from accessing it without excluding yourself is hypocritical. Not that I think you care, since I told you this a month ago."

"You betrayed Eliksni, your actions are killing us!"

"And what are you doing?" she gestured to the golden banner billowing outside the window that marked the landing zone for the Guardians. "The very same thing."

"For the _right_ reasons."

"Oh, Variks, you sound like a stuck record," Eramis growled, tilting her head back to roll her eyes skyward. "I want to leave this place behind. There is nothing I can do for my House, or this planet. There is _nothing_ that can fix this. I want your database to see who is alive and leave you to do whatever it is you think is righteous."

"And you would try to take back your power."

She couldn't blame him for his thinking, but it was a sore reminder of how frustrating her once-scribe could be to deal with. "Yes, of course," her tone dripped with sarcasm. "Use your head, Variks. I could announce my rebirth and gather my House in a final attack on their machine-god, but I would be stopped. The Guardians would raze me from existence faster than Virixas was by your false Queen. Assume we lived in a world where I succeeded but was killed in the attempt, who would lead? Where would someone without my visions and ideas go? My second death would be a waste, and create more problems than we face already." 

"Is the potential for destruction not enough? You told the Young Wolf you would ruin all they hold dear."

"And when the opportunity arises, I will. I will always dream of that. Nothing says what I desire has to align with reality," she brushed him off. "Now tell me where the data is before I take it myself."

Variks kept his eyes squinted at her, then turned to type into the console. "It _was_ in the Prison. What I have is incomplete."

"I don't care. Anything is better than nothing."

He pressed a collection of buttons for a few moments, then, clicking to himself, stood aside to let her examine the console. "Eramis," he said. "You have a...third chance. To do good. To help our people, without your House. This is rare."

"I help nobody but myself," she replied, scrolling through an endless list of colour coded names. Most were highlighted in red as deceased, including her own. The longer she looked, the more names she spotted that she knew had passed but hadn't yet been updated. 

"Someone who spends two years building a safe haven for our kind is not someone who works for selfish means."

Eramis bristled. "That was the past. This is now." Sorting it to show who was alive instead, a collection of blue coloured names appeared. Parts of the list were corrupted into meaningless symbols and noise, but it was mostly comprehensible. She needed someone with connections, someone who would keep their mouth shut about her apparent resurrection. The remainders of House Devils would worship her as a god and proclaim their loyalty across the entire system to anyone who would listen. House Dusk were too out of touch, and those on the Tangled Shore would laugh her out of the territory the moment she made an appearance. Kells of any kind weren't looked upon kindly there, and Spider was hardly someone she could envision herself seeing eye to eye with. 

'Power in the old bonds.' the whispers worked through her mind again. 

Tapping her claws against the metal, she pondered. There was one Devil who may have survived. Among her people were certain individuals considered to be unkillable. She was one of them. Taniks was another. Rumour said that Misraaks was among their elite group, although she suspected it to be a falsehood to make himself look better. Many of the others had in fact been slaughtered or at minimum vanished without a trace. 

Wethraks, however, had proven time and time again that he could never be put down. He had grown into a skilled warrior over the centuries, sometimes disappearing for months at a time but always returning unscathed and with extensive knowledge of resources to take advantage of. If anyone had made it through the disasters of the previous years, it would be him. Typing his name into the search bar, she chuckled to herself to see it highlighted as 'living'. Curiously, his entry brought up a sub-list, and when opened revealed that the rest of his ‘Devils' Claw’ hadn't been so lucky, save for the younger members of his crew. He was one of the last Barons standing who still claimed allegiance to the old House. 

Shutting the list before Variks could lean over and examine where she was going, she stepped back. "I have what I need."

"Good," his chainmail covering shifted as he opened his mouth to continue, stopped by the beep of an incoming transmission. He wheezed, "I suggest you leave. Before the Guardians see you."

"If I find one of your pawns following me off this moon, I promise that I'll post your body on the front of my Skiff as an ornament."

Variks chuffed, unwilling to argue. Whether it was because he believed her, or because he had no rebuttal was unclear, and she didn't care enough to find out. His idle threats were grating against her ears, annoying her just to passively listen. 

"Don't contact me again. I won't come to your aid," she added, turning and walking away. 

As the doors slid open, Variks spoke out. "Eramis," he called, shifting his staff in one hand. "What do you want in all of this? Truly?"

"What do I want?" she stopped and looked over her shoulder. "To be away from you." With that, she stalked away from his base, taking the long route past the snow-Eliksni and ripping Variks's arm out from it. She turned it over in her hands as she walked, spinning its loose ball joint around like a stress toy to deter her thoughts from giving in to turning back and beating him to death with it. 

Transmatting back into her Skiff, Eramis hurled his arm against the wall and cursed her past self and every single choice that had led up to that point. Speaking with him about the Darkness and its nature, even when framed as hypothetical mights and maybes, was a grave misstep. Unfortunately, he was at times the only means of having intelligent and challenging conversation when others were busy. They usually mutually came apart with something new to think about. Clearly, Variks did too much thinking.

' _This is your own fault. You were too cocky,_ ' she scolded herself. Physically keeping him on a leash like a trained war beast would have been more suitable. She wouldn't have had to trek all the way over to his home or battle with interference on the radio just to talk to him if he was nailed down outside her door and under constant watch. It probably would have scratched his ever-present itch for punishment, too. He always was a masochist.

He was too attached to his bizarre sense of judgement, and to his bonds with humans. She should have seen it coming. He was too weak to do anything by himself. His strength was Dreg-strength - the ability to be an inoffensive servant whilst scheming behind the scenes and putting the pieces in place to usurp his master. Even if he was kept on constant surveillance, he would find ways when someone's attention inevitably lapsed. 

Killing him would also be the easiest and fastest possible way to get a bounty back on her head and alert the system to her continued existence. His adoring fans would turn rabid, and hell had no fury like a human fighting for a misguided cause. Particularly a Lightbearer.

Still, something struck her about the Dark’s dire and specific warning. Often, the whispers preferred to guide her to people, places or things and let her own intuition take over. To provide as intense a vision as when she gripped Variks was unusual. "Why did you warn me? What are you seeing for me?" she murmured. 

They didn't answer.

Waiting a few seconds more for a response, she grumbled, "Fine. Keep your secrets." Whatever its motives were, they were to be discovered firsthand. Begging for hints or clues would lead to further silence. The whispers shared what they wanted when they were ready.

Busying herself with driving the Skiff into the upper atmosphere while she calculated a path to Earth as a best guess, doubt crept into her mind. Variks's database was incomplete, and there was no telling how long he spent maintaining it once he had other activities to occupy his time with. Although their numbers were dwindling fast, keeping track of thousands of Eliksni in the main drags of the Sol system alone was a gargantuan task. Some were guaranteed to have slipped under his radar. Wethraks could have easily disappeared under unknown circumstances, and with his track record, nobody could confirm whether he was dead or alive. Finding him was an impossibility at the best of times when he wandered. 

Eramis eventually sat back in the pilot's seat and folded her arms. There was nothing to do but wait and deal with whatever the outcome was when it arrived. Attempting to predict where Wethraks was or wasn't was a pointless exercise, and putting out a call on the radio while planetside would just allow the machine-spawn unfettered access to her location and intentions. 

The Skiff, contrary to its previous performance, sailed into the outer atmosphere at a leisurely yet consistent pace, moving into the expanses of the stars within a few minutes. Another ship - a Ketch - popped into the radar, and she turned her head to see who’s it was in place of not being able to identify a callsign. 

Atraks's Ketch hung in orbit, unmanned. It crossed her mind to dock the Skiff alongside it and bring it to Earth, but it was too large, far bigger than anything she realistically required. A second chance at life after the events of the last few months meant keeping a low profile was paramount. Besides that, its absence would be noticed immediately by any Lightbearers entering or leaving the remains of the Morning Star. From the sight of jumpships loitering around it, the risk was too great.

She took the controls and pushed the Skiff away from the moon as fast as it could go without entering lightspeed, staying beneath their radars. As she went, she leant over to access the communications array and keyed in Wethraks's radio frequency and encoding. If he truly had survived, then his heavily encrypted personal comms channels presumably hadn't been cracked by any unwelcome listeners - assuming he hadn't changed or upgraded anything.

The screen blinked a couple of times before connecting, accepting the line and flashing up a red dot to indicate it was active and concealed from public channels. Taking no chances, she spoke in Eliksni, "Wethraks, this is Veekris. This is an urgent request for your attention, do you copy?"

The radio crackled, and she waited in tense quiet for a response. Her pseudonym hadn't seen use since Six Fronts, but it would be recognisable to a Devil. Clicking a few buttons to repeat her message to him, she chirruped when the line engaged.

"Veekris?! Is that really you?" Wethraks's accented voice came back through the speaker. 

"Yes, I don't have much time. Send me your co-ordinates, I need to speak with you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keen eyes will spot Veekris makes reference to what Eramis's actual name was back in Destiny 1.  
> If you haven't heard how Beyond Light and Eramis herself were constructed off a misheard line of Variks's dialogue and a Bernstein / Bernstain Bears type collective dimensional jump, then boy do I have a fun story to share.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Graphic description of violence at the end of this chapter. If you prefer to skip it, please look straight to the notes at the end of the chapter for a summary when you see Eramis getting into a hammock.  
> This is the only occurrence of descriptions of that kind for this entire work.
> 
> Final Attempt = Twilight Gap
> 
> 28/2/2021 - This chapter was edited and some bits were moved and re-written to be in Chapters 4 and 5.

Eramis let the Skiff run itself to Earth with the minimal autopilot she could repair, her mind too clouded to take further control of the ship for the relatively short journey after Wethraks confirmed his whereabouts. 

Losing Kridis hurt, and sitting alone to process the loss made it sting significantly more. She wanted to scream and destroy something to work through the grief, but the Skiff was in poor condition without her adding to the damage. 

Everyone was gone. Every single Eliksni she considered a friend, a crewmate, a battle-buddy or even a soulmate had been murdered by Lightbearers, and nothing could change it. Bringing them back through rituals or technological means, while possible in theory, felt Impossible in practicality. With the Deep Stone Crypt under enemy control, the labs were off limits. That, and the scans undertaken of her Council were at their lowest fidelity, save for Atraks's. The higher the detail, the higher a chance the Eliksni in question succumbed to the toxins injected within days. It wasn't a pleasant death, and it was how she grew increasingly frustrated with Praksis's results. Each presentation of his research concluded in the death of his subjects, up to a certain point where it all fell into place and he cracked the code.

She didn't mourn his death as with Phylaks. It was more of a shame and an agitation that he was put down. With the right guidance and coaching, he could have achieved great things for their people. And next to Variks, he was the only one who could keep up with her more philosophical debates, even though he didn't always fully understand. He was a brilliant mind, but too young and inexperienced to fully grasp the meaning behind abstract and hypothetical thinking. Much to her annoyance, he needed to see his experiments fail and watch Eliksni mutilate themselves. They spoke of feelings that they were permanently locked into a mech they were piloting once in their new Exo bodies countless times before he understood her points about the links between mind and body. 

Unless the brain could be fooled into thinking the body was a correct match from the start, the lengths it was necessary to go to to convince a new Exo that everything matched was more trouble than it was worth. There was never a guarantee it would work, and the risk to her Council, even if she did somehow succeed in loading them into new bodies, was off-putting. On a more personal level, living, working or even nesting beside cold metal not-Eliksni sounded unappealing. A living machine was no replacement for the real thing. 

There was always the possibility of copying Skolas's work and manipulating the Vex network further. On the surface, locating and opening a smaller portal to find another 'doomed' timeline where she still ultimately failed so that she could rescue her friends seemed trivial, if time consuming. But it wouldn't be the same, and it would be solely self serving. The memory of taking them from their world would stick in her mind and remind her of the divide between the real and the manipulated every time she looked at them. 

The 'other' Eramis would also be left alone, and it was torture enough to process in a single timeline. Her other self would likely find a way to do the same thing and take her reality back. As initially humorous as the idea of getting into a battle with herself over who had the rights to their own friends was, she imagined it would grow tiring after the first few occasions. 

None of the Eliksni she wanted back could be returned without risking her life. The same went for the people and Eliksni she wanted dead. ' _ If I was given this opportunity, I was given it for a better purpose than killing myself, _ ' she mused. Too many would want her head if she was caught in the act. The visions the Darkness showed would become a self fulfilling prophecy. It was just a matter of understanding who posed the most risk if she chose to do anything.

If the Young Wolf took the first priority for revenge, and Variks was untouchable, then Misraaks was next. Word travelled across planets saying that the Light Kell had a Ghost of his own, and that he was more than proficient in using his Light abilities. Paired with the natural talents and the unshakeable resolve of the Young Wolf, she stood no chance of exacting revenge. They would strike her down at the first hint of trouble. Adding in the members of House Light to the equation only worsened the odds. No matter what she did, without an excessively elaborate plan that would take months to enact, they would remain alive, and all her friends would stay dead.

Her thoughts drifted to Kridis again. Together, they would have been as unstoppable as the Young Wolf and Misraaks. A perfect reflection of each other. One wielding the Light, and the other carving a path of destruction with the Dark. But it was too perfect. The Darkness tended not to like symmetry. Everything had to be tilted heavily in favour of one side - usually whichever was the most powerful. 

Understanding that the servants of the machine-god would prevail while she was left with nothing left a bitter taste in her mouth. ‘ _ Why was I cast aside? I did everything right. The Young Wolf is only strong because of his gifts. How can he be stronger than I am on his own? _ ’ she attempted to puzzle it out. He was only human - an Exo, more accurately. His form in itself came with benefits, but they were minor. It had to be something about his personality that made him so appealing. Quite what it was, she couldn’t tell. She had unearthed every story and report about his antics, and none of them pointed towards a being with any kind of character. Misraaks, she could grasp why he was chosen. He was optimistic, a competent warrior, generally amicable if incredibly blunt. The Young Wolf was none of those things. Just a semi-mindless, near silent killing machine with a penchant for shiny new weapons and doing the same activities over and over again and expecting a different result on their completions. 

Admittedly, his six year career was impressive. But he was using the Light as a crutch, and she told him so. Take the Light and the Dark from him, and he was as average as every other humanoid she had exterminated. And if she removed her own legends and achievements for her history, they were equals. ‘ _ So why does he prevail where I don't? _ ’

The answer was lost on her, and it hurt her head to give it too much thought. There was no choice but to bide her time and wait. Even if it took a century or more to avenge the deaths of her Council, it would be worth it.

Before she realised where she was, the navigation console alarmed. Coming back to her senses, she scooted over to the control stick and guided the Skiff through re-entry as it left warp speed. Willing it to at minimum not break up in the atmosphere with every fiber of her being and gritting her teeth as the ship rattled and made noises that she didn't want to uncover the cause of, she watched the sensors and dials with an intensity she hadn't needed to utilize in centuries. 

The Skiff rocketed out from the skies, speeding across the open mountain ranges close to the City. Wethraks's co-ordinates pointed towards the area where the Final Attempt was fought. She frowned at the screen, tapping it in case it was a display glitch. His apparent location was suspicious. Not only was it uncomfortably close to the City walls, but it was right in the middle of where she and a number of other Devils made their last stand before being forced to retreat under heavy fire. She lost her legs in the onslaught. Others considered themselves lucky to escape with their lives hanging in the balance. 

The so-called Great Machine appeared to be in marginally better condition than when she saw it last, tilting her head to gaze upon it for a few moments when she neared. One layer of smooth alabaster made up its exterior instead of cracked patterns where pieces of it had broken off across the planet. The walls surrounding it were unchanged, if a little quieter than usual. Someone had mentioned in passing that a lockdown of sorts had been enacted on the citizens and all Lightbearers had been recalled to patrol nearby. From the lack of traffic entering or leaving the City, their assessment seemed to be accurate.

Her eyes shifted to the wide strip of land at the base of the closest mountain. Squinting at the ground, she made out a few tents and shelters that had been erected, and the shapes of Eliksni moving between or milling around outside of them. It was an outpost, and more than a militarized base. It was a home. Fires flickered underneath cooking pots attended by Dregs missing their docking caps, and those who weren't talking to one another were ferrying pieces of scrap around and into a much larger structure hidden beneath a canopy of stitched up tarps with the emblem of House Light painted across.

It was an almost perfect diorama of the villages on Riis. Misraaks had beaten her at her own game, without even knowing what his home world looked like. Where she set out to rebuild in the image of the great cities beneath the machine-god, he had pulled together the skeleton of a community into one peaceful settlement out of nothing. Eramis wasn't sure whether to be upset, stunned, or disgruntled. Building an outpost, temporary or not, on ground saturated by the blood and Ether of her old House felt borderline blasphemous. Misraaks was a Wolf and never saw the worst of the conflict, but the societal impact had made its way across the stars to the Reef. He had to know that that particular range was forbidden territory to all Eliksni. She found herself physically unable to consider a world where he didn't. To think that he had turned the meaning of the place on its head to become a place of peace and safety over death was borderline inconceivable 

Looking instead for Wethraks, she spotted his Skiff anchored to the ground at the edge of the settlement. Far enough away that he had some privacy, but could still be considered part of the 'village'. She guided her Skiff down beside it, careful to make it as smooth a landing as possible as not to attract too much attention. Skiffs were loud vessels at the best of times in open ground.

Once landed, the engines powered off in a final whimper. She tried to restart them, but the vessel didn’t respond. It had given up. Sounds of work and chatter filtered through the hull, but none were close, and her cloaking drive was still activated. Unless someone chose to investigate what the brief noise was, she was hidden. 

She watched through the darkened hull, thankful that the view out was one-way. Too many Eliksni were in the immediate area, and her armor was distinctive. Someone would raise the alarm the instant she was seen moving between the two Skiffs. A disguise was necessary. The Vanguard and House Light knew her usual manner of dress, but no Lightbearer in the City had seen her without her helmet. So long as the distinctive scars across the right side of her face were hidden, she could be any other Eliksni. It wasn't like humans bothered to learn to tell her people apart.

She removed her helmet and put it to one side, unbuckling her cloak and mantle and stripping as much of her armor off as possible. Turning her cape the wrong way out, she wrapped it around herself and over her head in a hood. Feeling naked without the armor that had previously almost become permanent attachments for the last year, she jostled her arms to obscure her body further and made a face. ' _ This is a terrible idea. _ ' she thought, tying her sash around her waist like a belt to keep the makeshift robe in place. With any luck, nobody was looking too closely at who came and went from Wethraks's Skiff. 

Deploying the drop hooks and climbing down from them again, she emerged from the ship - and Earth's relatively balmy atmosphere hit her like a wall. Her body itched, growing uncomfortable and desperate to rip off the insulated suit that was so useful on Europa. It was co-opted from human pressure suits left behind in the moon's labs, protecting from the biting cold and trapping her own heat inside of it - meaning that none of it could escape unless it was unzipped. Earth's humidity, as mild as she knew it really was at the City's latitude, felt horrifically oppressive. 

Attempting to ignore it as she made her way around the hull of Wethraks's Skiff, laughter and shouting erupted from a few metres in front. Shrinking back into the shadow, her eyes grew wide to see a group of pups running past and back towards the tents, oblivious to her presence. ' _ He can  _ **_not_ ** _ have had pups. That's impossible! We were on the same page about not taking mates! _ ' 

Coming around to the front of the ship, she found Wethraks hanging out from his entrance ramp, head on swivel. His armor was a mix of old and new. Devils colours, paired with his signature black helmet, dark tinted lenses turning his eyes a deep red. The rest was untouched by battle and edged in gold, with the symbol of House Light on his chest plate and cloak. It suited him better than the drab black and brown camouflage he used to wear, although seeing her old House's colours bearing the wrong sigil came across like a glimpse of an alternate timeline. Were it not for the necklace of fangs inherited from his late mate hanging around his neck, he looked for all the world like a ceremonial guard from Riis. 

Eramis clicked her mandibles to catch his attention, offering him a slight wave when he saw her. 

"Veekris! Come in," he gestured a lower hand towards himself, urging her inside with clear concern spread over his face. "Is that frostbite? You should've said you needed help like this."

"It'll go away on its own," Eramis shook her head as she walked up into the Skiff. "Who's pups are those?

"Not mine! I think they belong to a refugee family from House Winter, they always hang around here and make me tell them stories."

She chirped. House Winter's continued existence to any degree was a surprise to her. None of their Ketches or bases on Venus returned her radio broadcasts, although they were receiving. She assumed they snubbed her for not aligning with their interests - whatever they were - but it made sense knowing that they were allied with House Light.

"Before we do anything, at least let me get you something," he bent down to search through a locked cupboard. "When was the last time you ate?"

"You don't need to do anything for me, I'm not staying long."

He pulled a jug of yellowish liquid from the shelf. "Not even a glass of lemonade?"

Eramis rolled her eyes and pushed her hood back. "All you had to do was say." She reached for the jug as soon as it came close, forgoing the offer of the cup put down in front of her. Gulping down the lemonade almost in one go, she set the jug down. Her eyelids twitched from the bitter sweetness. Whatever Wethraks had put into the mix, it tasted as if it had enough sugar to keep her awake for the next year.

"I know you too well," he chuckled, slipping off his helmet. His black mohawk sprang out from being crushed underneath it, shaking his head quickly to get its usual volume back. "So what happened? I heard something about you being frozen?"

"Yes, by the Young Wolf," she coughed, pausing and then correcting herself. "The Darkness. The Lightbearer bested me and then I was consumed."

"Were you dead?"

"Yes. I woke up on the ground."

"And you definitely haven't been chosen?"

"Do I sound like I've lost my memories?"

"I've heard of stranger things happening," Wethraks shrugged. He sat down adjacent to her and poured himself a cup from the remains she left. "Is Europa abandoned?"

"In all but name."

"Have you sent a message out?"

"No. If I stood in front of everyone and declared House Salvation to be finished, I would be docked and killed in seconds once they overcame the shock of my return. There are ambitious Eliksni in my ranks who would take my place in a second if I let them. How am I to tell them it's done?"

"You don't."

"I let them tear each other apart?" She clicked dismissively at him. "I'm trying to help our people, not accelerate our death spiral."

"It doesn't matter what you do now, you're always going to be in the wrong with someone. It just depends how many factions at once you want after your head," he replied. "And who you think is most and least capable of doing something about it."

"House Light is the first contender," she settled back and folded her lower arms. "How do you do it? Talking about sharing the machine, being around Lightbearers that have killed everyone we know?"

"I do it because I think it's the best chance we have of surviving," he answered. "There's a prophecy the humans have that says four things about how the Great Machine relates to them. They say it's benevolent, has free will, and will always save them, but afterwards it will leave."

She met his eye, a shiver going down her spine. For a moment, his voice matched with the whispers, mixing into one. ' _ Did he say that? _ '

"I mean, look at how the Darkness took over other planets in the system," he continued, and as he spoke the whispers faded. "Once they move further, it's not impossible that the same happens to this planet. There's another prophecy about what they call a 'second Collapse'. Like our Whirlwind, but because the Great Machine didn't leave after their first one, they're due another. We'll be stronger fighting and finding a new home together."

"That's not prophecy. It's truth," Eramis replied, perturbed. "Have you heard the whispers too?"

"Whispers?"

"Never mind," she shook her head. There was no way that Wethraks was under the same influence as she was. He was too passive and content to keep his networks as they were rather than using them to uncover new strength. "You want to spend centuries tracking it down to repeat what we've experienced already, just with humans this time?"

"Either that or find a way to escape the Dark."

"You don't remember the Whirlwind. You cannot escape it. Who you spend your time tracking its movements with is irrelevant. When their god leaves, they will see it for what it is and become just as we are, and we all will fall further together," she said, confident. Lightbearers were predictable, and it didn't take a genius to observe that Eliksni and humanity were two sides of the same coin. "That is why I saw sense in wielding the Darkness and becoming one with it. The only thing this new House will share in is becoming to the new chosen species what us 'Fallen' are to humanity. It's a constant cycle."

Wethraks looked at her with an incredulous uncertainty, his thought process clear as day. To gaze upon a once-Kell hiding in his ship, wrapped in the banner of a broken House and rambling about facts only she was burdened with knowledge of, wondering if she had finally lost her mind after years of being imprisoned and a failed campaign on Europa. "But there must be some truth to what the humans say. They had their Speakers."

"And they were charlatans. Humanity is wrong to call their 'Traveler' benevolent. It's a machine, influenced by forces we aren't meant to understand. Ascribing morality to it is fruitless. What is coming is inescapable, unless you try to leave the system and risk being ripped apart."

"Well, if you're right then the good thing is I've got a leg up," he smirked. "I always thought human prophecies weren't that accurate, like a lot of ours weren't. How many Kells of Kells have we had?"

Eramis didn't respond, waiting instead for him to realize what he said to her.

"Uh. Yeah. Anyway," Wethraks cleared his throat and glanced away. "You know I always talked about sharing the Great Machine. I fought because we didn't get a choice and the humans wouldn't see sense. Now they're understanding."

"Relying on it and humanity is weakness. It'll be your undoing."

"Then join us and tell them what you're telling me, instead of keeping this to yourself."

Eramis gave him a weary look. "I'd sooner perish."

"It's just a suggestion."

"Most of the ranks in this House are refugees that fled from me. And I'm not popular with humans, either. I refuse to live as a prisoner again."

"Make a deal that's agreeable to them and they let things slide. It worked for me, and I was on their most wanted next to Taniks."

"Who was killed."

"Was he?"

"For now." 

"My point is that they'll look past a lot if you say the right words and do the right things, whether you believe in them or not. I wouldn't say they trust us, but there's some good will. Some of them are really interested in our culture." he said.

Eramis curled her lip. "House Light isn't  _ our culture _ . How many truly know what  _ we _ grew up with? Songs that aren't about war or martyrs? Our music, dances, our traditions? How we mapped galaxies and didn't resort to using children's toys for military operations?"

"The legends are still passed down, but there aren't many of us left who remember the old stories."

"Then I raise a better question. Just in House Devils, how many of the survivors were born before or during the Final Attempt?"

Wethraks made an uncomfortable noise. "Not many. You, me, a handful of others in this House. A few handfuls in House Dusk, and then most of them are at the Shore and denounced our House in the first place. Or they're on Europa."

Eramis felt sick to her stomach. When she ripped down banners and burned smaller lairs out across the planet, the loss wasn't visible. It was about removing old things that had no use and needed destroying in the name of a fresh start. Forgetting the Eliksni that once filled the bases and outposts and how proudly their banners were flown, for they had no meaning in her vision. In the name of preserving culture, she had played a hand in tearing it down. "That is...worse than I thought."

"All of us have faced heavy losses. This outpost is as good a home as a lot of us are going to see for a long time," he nodded, a hint of sadness in his voice. "It's a shame how much the younger generations won't get to understand or witness"

"House Salvation was meant to preserve some of what we had left. I had a scribe! What Kells have had scribes in the last three centuries?" she exclaimed. "I dredged up some of our own, our veterans, and they understood my point. But the rest knew nothing but human things. They almost spoke better English than Eliksni. All of our traditions and cultures are gone. We were proud of ourselves in how we stood apart from humanity. Now we may as well be heading towards becoming the same species."

"It's a new age. The time of Kell and House is over. The whole ‘ _ Death to Kells _ ’ movement hasn't helped."

"Yet you follow Misraaks in joining a new House, and I had scores of Eliksni from all Houses naming me Eramiskel."

"Misraaks is Kell in name only. He leads us, but he's not a Kell in the way you and I know. He's a…" he trailed off, searching for the right words. "A warrior-negotiator. Like Ursaviks was."

Eramis clicked her mandibles, disapproving. The Kells they once lived beneath, aside from a few key individuals, were ineffective and gratuitously ruthless, but Misraaks's ideas of leadership combined with his lack of experience and worldly knowledge sounded significantly less appealing. Nothing could be gained from negotiating with Lightbearers, and he had yet to learn that lesson. A third of their kind struggled to understand anything more complex than punching anything that moved. 

"If you're worried about what we're turning into, you could always create your own collection of memories from the old times and teach the younger ones."

"Even you agree It's too late now. They're old things. What interest would it hold to our own? All it would do is allow humans to make a mockery of us in the name of 'respecting our culture'," she made air quotes with her upper hands - a distinctly human mannerism. "When they were the ones to destroy it."

Wethraks tilted his head to one side, not disagreeing. "It doesn't mean it's not worth preserving for your own interests. Sometimes it's nice to keep those reminders of what was."

"And what would I do with it? I'd be wasting fuel carrying it around with me, and someone would steal it all if I put it somewhere."

He rumbled, seeing her point. "You could make something of it. What about making up your own settlement? Not a House, but a commune of Eliksni who think the same things."

"In the future, perhaps. I want to keep my own company for now, and be  _ my own _ salvation. At least until humanity forgets I exist and I can return safely to do something with myself."

"So what will you do in the meantime?"

Eramis grumbled, unknowing. "Anything, as long as it keeps me away from Misraaks or the machine-spawn."

"That's...convenient. I might actually have a job that you could do for me while you’re doing that," Wethraks laughed a little. "It's about the Devils Ketch."

She raised her eyebrows at him in genuine surprise, although her stomach dropped to hear its name uttered again. "I thought it was destroyed."

"No, just evacuated when the Red Legion invaded. Myself and a few others drove them out a few years ago, but I left a few things behind there. I can't go back to get them because the Tower has access to my ship logs and telemetry."

"And you  _ willingly _ allowed them to have those?" she chided.

"I know, it was part of the deal on letting me walk free. Either way, there's armor and weapons this House needs in there."

"Why would I help this House?"

"It's going to be you or the next Eliksni to come to me," Wethraks replied with a shrug. "This Skiff is kind of turning into a revolving door of Devils, Kings, Exiles -.you name it, someone's sat in your seat before. I just figured if you ever returned, then you would know what to look for."

Eramis mulled over his proposition for a moment. Visiting the Ketch, in whatever condition it was in,  _ would _ offer some closure. She spent untold time in the vessel during the Long Drift as a leading navigator tracking the Great Machine before she was assigned a Ketch of her own to manage, and promptly swore off stepping foot in it for anything other than the most urgent business. "I'll think about it, but even if I did go, I would need a new ship from you. Parts at minimum. My Skiff stopped working when I landed here."

"That's fine, so long as you can wait a while before leaving."

She caught his drift immediately. "You cannot be telling me that you don't have one ship to spare for scrap in an entire House."

Wethraks blinked at her. His silence said everything.

"Of course you don't," she sighed, leaning back and pressing a hand to her eyes in despair. ' _ I should scavenge for myself. _ '

"We don't have the resources to hand anything over permanently, but I have some connections. Something will be available."

"Find the parts, then we'll discuss it further," It felt like a safe bet that Wethraks wouldn't be able to find the necessary pieces to make the Skiff flight-worthy again any time soon, offering plenty of time to think on the idea of seeing  _ Sepiks-Fel  _ again. “I need to repair my Skiff’s engines, anyway.”

"I wouldn’t. There’s too many people out now and too many eyes on the sky. I can go and hunt for what you need today, and get it installed by tomorrow if it's available."

"...Then where do I stay?" she asked, puzzled. Walking out into the open was asking to be taken prisoner, and her Skiff wasn't secure enough to be used as a shelter without its engines at least half-functional. Someone could easily bump into it if the cloaking drive was left on, or one of the more adventurous pups would squeeze in via the drop-hooks. 

"In here. Nobody comes in without my say-so. Honestly, you look like you could use some sleep, as well."

"I don't sleep anymore." It was a pointless endeavour. Insomnia was an issue she had struggled with since she was a pup, and the Darkness didn't help. Either she laid awake for hours on end staring at the ceiling, or she fell into the deepest sleep only to be thrown out in the middle of a nightmare. It was more convenient to steal a few minutes of rest where she could, even if it meant being found passed out at increasingly inconvenient times. She blamed it on her age, but the pitying glances offered in exchange for an excuse told her everything she needed to know about whether anyone believed it.

"Still. I know I'd want to lay down if I had to go through everything you did," Wethraks wandered over to a hammock strung across the back corner and fluffed up the pillows and blankets. “Just take the day off. Recover. I’m not in a rush.”

Eramis furrowed her brow at it, wondering if his sleeping arrangement was another bizarre, human-esque progression that she couldn't see the logic in. "What happened to making nests?"

"Took up too much room and weight. I ended up giving the structure to someone else for a few tanks of Ether," he replied, walking back past her to pick up his helmet. "Help yourself to anything in the cabinets. Get some rest while I'm gone for a few hours."

“I’ll try.” A little voice in her head said that a different sleeping arrangement could stop night terrors, and a hammock was as different as she could get. It was a far sight better than finding a chair to curl up in as she usually found herself waking up on.

"Good. I'll be back." he smiled at her before taking his leave, the door winding up behind him and locking in place.

Left alone, Eramis looked around the Skiff in search of inspiration on what to do in his absence. For someone so well known for his sentimentality, his living space was bare of any decorations or noticeable signs that it was lived in. She used to live in a prison cell, and still decorated it with bits and pieces stolen from the arena. Trophies always brightened up a room. Wethraks had nothing of the sort, even though he had likely been living in the ship for a few months.

With nothing better to do and nowhere to go, she hauled herself out of her seat and over to the hammock to place a hand on it. How he could trade a nest for what was essentially a few bits of fabric hanging in the air, she would never know. Thin canvas sank down under her palm as she pressed down, uncertain that it would hold her weight. "If it can handle Wethraks, it can handle me," she muttered to herself, hopping up into it and sliding down into the blankets. 

Resting her head back, she sank into the well-worn cushion, all the stuffing split apart inside and leaving gaps inside the pillowcase. It occurred to her that Wethraks was handling the hammock, rather than it handling him. 

She would also never know why he let himself be tracked by the City. Locations could be spoofed, but he seemed quite comfortable with the agreement. He always liked humans,but it didn’t change the distinct feeling that trading his personal information for freedom was a step too far. As was requesting she go on his fetch quest for whatever he kept in the Devils Ketch. She admired many of the ships the Devils commandeered, but the Ketch ranked last in her consideration. It was an ugly, mismatched thing, full of poor engineering hack-jobs, and even worse memories. 

But Wethraks didn’t know that. He grew up on the ship for a few short years of pup and Dreghood, then was planted on Earth to spend the rest of his days on solid ground. He lived in blissful ignorance of the atrocities committed on that ship and the blood that was scrubbed from its walls. 

‘ _ It isn’t his fault that he doesn’t know. Everyone had calmed by the time we were observing Earth. None of the Drift means anything to him, that was home. _ ’ she found herself envying his idyllic, ignorant childhood. The Devils Ketch was no place of safety to anyone except the youth. No  _ Sepiks-Fel _ Devil spoke of what they had seen or experienced, if they were still alive to remember it. Everyone recalled the darker days on Earth, but the Long Drift and even the Edge Wars were better left to the stars. 

‘ _ It’s been years. Anything left in there can’t hurt me, and it will take longer to travel there than to get what he wants. _ ’ Eramis sighed and closed her eyes, then almost instantly opened them again as she fidgeted into a better position and huddled up on her side. The hammock rocked from her wriggling, gently swinging back and forth in a comforting motion. One she hadn't felt since she was a pup, in retrospect. Between that sentiment and the memories of the Long Drift threatening at the edge of her mind, she growled to herself and shut her eyes. Attempting to doze was better than lying awake doing nothing and letting her thoughts meander. Allowing herself to do anything except focus on sleeping was a dangerous game when Misraaks was likely within the settlement and just out of her grasp, particularly when memories with emotional weight ran through her head. 

The idle sounds of the ship creaking and Eliksni chattering from a distance faded away as she fell asleep, but the whispers remained constant. They buzzed in her head like flies, no longer annoying but disruptive enough to disturb her from resting fully. Eventually though, they too faded.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself marching through the halls of the Devils Ketch. Phylaks, Kridis and Siriks moved behind her like shadows, both guarding her from potential threats and following in her footsteps as support. She moved with determination and fury, upper hands bunched into fists and fire running through her veins. As soon as the news broke of Drifis’s death, she had turned the Ketch around and sped back to Earth as fast as possible, She had dreamed of the day she would get to fight for Kellship, and the chance she had trained for and spent her entire life fantasizing about had arrived. 

Coming to the wide doors of the throne room and pushing them open, she glared up at the tall Eliksni lounging in the Kell's throne at the opposite end of the hall.

"You're almost late, Eramis," Solkis called. He chuckled, his helmet removed and at the side of the seat so that she could watch his eyes roving over her entourage. Wethraks stood behind him, red eyes glittering as he tightened his grip on his arc spear. Other Captains readied themselves in turn, chattering at their entrance. 

"I have 24 hours to stake my claim, and the sun hasn't risen yet," she countered, drawing her shock blade. "Solkis, I challenge you to trial by combat in your claim to Kellship. You are unfit to lead House Devils, and myself and my Council will not stand to see you as Kell."

"Council?! Is that what you're calling them now?" Solkis guffawed, trying and failing to stifle his laughter before he could speak again. "Phylaks, Kridis and Siriks, a Council? You look more like something a Dreg pulled out of a hedge backwards."

"Better than the band of thugs standing behind you. Kellship requires more than brute strength. Someone like you should know that, unless you truly think that Drifis was a good example to learn from."

"As if pirates are any more suited to leading the Devils. What is it that you do, aside from thieving and ravaging?"

"We have achieved more in our lifetimes than you will in a millennia. Where are the legends of Solkis, the Hunter? I have yet to hear one, but there are plenty of my own."

"Bold words for someone who hasn't defeated every single challenger who has come their way," he gestured to the collection of cloaks piled on to a nearby console. "Legends mean nothing if they can't be upheld."

"You sound as if you're afraid of me and what I could do," she unclipped her cloak from her shoulders and dropped it in front of her, awaiting his acceptance. "Prove yourself to me. I want Kellship more than you do."

"Oh, I'm not afraid. But you should be," he rose from his throne, bringing up his shock blade from where it was propped at his side and unsheathing his dagger. Walking down the steps to stand opposite her, he undid his cloak from around his neck and threw it down between them. "I honour your challenge, even if I doubt your beliefs."

Eramis snarled at him, raising her sword at the ready and activating its arc energy. "Make the first move, dreamer."

Solkis charged at her like a bullet. Barely able to parry his blade in time, her sword clashed into his in a flurry of swipes. She held him off effortlessly, the sound of both blades crashing together deafening in the hall's high ceilings. Circling around so that her back was to the throne and letting him wear himself out, they broke apart after a few more seconds and clicked at each other. The slightest twitch of her arms made him tense, reacting before she had committed to her next move. ‘ _ He is afraid. He isn’t this hesitant usually. _ ’

Eramis lunged, tipping his blade upwards as she caught the edge of her own beneath it and catching him off guard. Following through, she spun her sword on the diagonal in her hand and swung at him, slicing hard into his chest plate and scoring a line through that split it in half from the arc energy flowing through it.

Solkis stumbled, glancing up and down between her and the scorch mark cut through his front. He laughed, wiping the molten steel away with the back of his gauntlet and flicking it on to the ground. "You've gotten quicker than I remember."

"And you slower!" she ran at him again, slamming her blade into the flat of his dagger as he stopped her. His sword cut through the air to feint at her throat, and she jumped out of the way before it could make contact. Keeping pace with her, he jabbed over her head. She raised her blade to block his attack, and in a flash of movement, his sword intertwined with hers and shoved her to the side. As his dagger moved into her blind side, she darted a lower arm out to grab it. A sharp pain slammed into her hand, and she cried out as it forced her off balance into a stagger low to the ground 

He edged out of her reach again, pointing his sword at the ready while his dagger moved like a snake in his other hand. "You'll have to do better than that!"

Regaining her balance, she surged forwards with a yell, forcing him to parry her blade so his own pointed downwards. Copying his own tactics, she feinted and lashed out with her off hand so that her claws raked inches from his face and made him flinch, then thrust at him again. His sword found hers, blocking the movement and knocking the blade back so that it twisted downwards against her hand. 

She recovered it, spinning the hilt back around and into her palm before a searing pain shot through her armpit. Gaze trailing down, her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the dagger embedded in her underarm between the plates of her exoskeleton, through her armor. Her arm gave way and her sword clattered to the ground, unable to keep a grip on it.

‘Everything I do, I do to test your convictions,’ Solkis threw his own sword down to take a tight hold of her arm, leveraging it against his dagger and twisting sharply. With an awful crack and crunch of bones against cartilage, he ripped the limb loose in a spray of Ether-blood. ‘And you failed.  _ You _ are the Eliksni's greatest atrocity.’

Eramis shrieked in agony, the pain of docking forgotten and unfamiliar. She collapsed, even as she begged every bone in her body to stay standing _. _ Frightened, she clamped a hand to the stump left behind and shuddered, gasping. Looking back to where her Council stood, her hearts plummeted to see them standing still, watching her trial as if frozen in time. "Do something!" she shouted at them.

‘They will do nothing. This is between you and I.’ he waved a hand in a subtle gesture and his own retinue charged on hers. She watched in abject horror as Wethraks wasted no time in running his spear through Siriks’s neck before her quartermaster could draw his sword, and Phylaks was overrun by three Captains launching themselves at her. Kridis went to flee, stopped as the doors were shut to trap them inside.

"No!" Eramis scrambled up, starting to run towards them. Solkis caught her, thrusting his blade into her gut so that it lodged in her carapace. She fumbled with it as she went to pull it free, crying out when it was driven deeper into her body. Panic flared in her chest, and in a moment of clarity amongst it, one thought rang in her mind, _'This isn't how our fight went, and this isn’t the real Solkis!_ _This is a nightmare!_ ’

‘You became unworthy to call yourself a Devil, so you named yourself Salvation Kell. How foolish to think you could Kell the Dark. Control the flow of circumstance,’ As he spoke, his words morphed into a cacophony of voices clashing against each other. Recognisable echoes, the voices of friends, family, rival Barons and something so dangerously  _ other _ that it shook her soul to its core. ‘You thought yourself better than it, and that is why your empire had to fall. Nothing is above the Dark.’

“You told me to take that power and lead!" Eramis growled, hatred burning in her soul as she tore her eyes away from the massacre to glare up at him again. " _ You _ are the one who deceived me!"

‘There is no such thing as deception. Only making the wrong choices, and being too blind to see where they led,’ the false-Solkis replied, leaning down to rip his sword from her side. Purple-ish Ether-blood flooded from the wound, dyeing her robes a deeper crimson, nearly black. ‘Do you understand your place now? Or must I dock you of your remaining arms?’

"No! This is inhumane! What did I do to deserve this?!" 

‘You failed,’ he replied in a nonchalant tone and stood over her, tilting her head back as he jabbed the point of his sword at her chin. ‘This isn't punishment. I can tell what you're thinking. I thought you would understand me after all our time together that I don’t work in those ways. We've been inseparable! How can I understand you but you still fail to comprehend everything that I am?’

"If this is what I get in return for not living up to your expectations, then I don't want any part of a life with you."

‘I think you will, actually. Remember, Eramis. I know you better than you know yourself.’

“And that’s why you torment me.” she said sourly. “I’m sick of these dreams, and sick of your hold on me.”

False-Solkis made a non-committal noise before he glared at her in return. ‘Go and do your friend's bidding then, if mine is so abhorrent. And maybe challenge me again. See where it gets you.’ his tone dripped with malice. Taking the hilt of his sword in both hands, he stabbed sharply through her throat before she could protest.

Eramis gasped, jolting upright and lurching to one side. Gripping her neck as if the blade was still through it, she clung to the hammock's fabric so hard that her claws pierced holes through it. She scanned across the Skiff with wide eyes, expecting the false-Solkis to be stood in the ship with her and waiting. 

Instead, the whispers were soft for the first time in weeks. They uttered a single word,

'Go.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the dream sequence - Eramis dreams of her battle for Kellship against Solkis, but it ends with her docking and eventual death when the dream takes a turn for the worse and the Dark boasts about how she and House Salvation failed. It wants her to go to the Devils Ketch for yet unknown reasons.
> 
> Me 🤝 The Characters I Write  
> Losing their arms in some gruesome manner
> 
> If you know, you know.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sepiks-Fel = Devils Ketch = Devilship Sepiks-Fel 000  
> Not Devilship Sepiks-Fel-084, which was Eramis's Ketch in my previous fic :)
> 
> 28/2/2021 - This chapter has been given a small addition based off content removed from Chapter 3.

Covered by years of collected snow, fallen branches, and rocks that camouflaged its shape, the grounded Devils Ketch was an imposing sight amongst the untouched wilderness of the Ural Mountains. 

Eramis crouched on the ridge overlooking its form, chittering uncertainly to herself. Wethraks had repaired her Skiff in record time, practically shoving her out of his own ship in the small hours of the night. He proceeded to hand her a data pad with a long checklist of items on it, then put a duffel bag over her shoulder before she could ask how all the items were supposed to be carried into her Skiff. 

His intention - Misraaks's intention - was to simply take what wasn't being utilised by the other Houses and have it all for themselves. Nothing in the Ketch strictly belonged to anyone once the Devils scattered, although as she picked through the list on the short trip over she spotted some particular requests earmarked for specific Eliksni. From the looks of it, they wanted almost every object on the Ketch stripped out. A crew of Devils could do the job in a day or two. Alone, she knew from experience it would be closer to a week. 

Apprehension weighed down on her like a stone. ' _ What am I getting myself into? _ ' Whatever was lying in wait inside the Ketch was not something she wanted to discover. The whispers and their insistence on her going were less innocent than simply encouraging her to start the job sooner rather than later. They had goaded her into many places in Europa, even pushing her to stake her claim on the moon initially. Almost every area it presented in held some apparition of itself within it, the most overt being the living 'statue' within the Crypt. If such a being was in the Ketch, then she decided while lying awake in wait of Wethraks’s return that she would drop everything, walk away and tell him it had been stripped clean by the Red Legion.

Unfortunately, there was no getting out of the task once it was accepted. Another Eliksni didn't need to be consumed by the mysterious Darkness within. She was accustomed to the Dark and its ways already, and could fend it off for long enough to do what needed to be done. On the other hand, it wasn’t all bad. Wethraks wouldn't mind her taking any armor or weapons that were sized to fit her as an extra bonus. 

Standing with a huff, she began the trudge through the deep snow that gathered on the abandoned pathway winding down the slope, unable to tear her gaze off the ship. For something that was wedged in a mountain range and physically incapable of being repaired or moved because of its faults, it had weathered the extreme climate well. More surprising was the Lightbearers’ continued ignorance to its existence. How it hadn't been located in the fifty-odd years since it fell was nothing short of a miracle, but she supposed there were other lairs and bases within far easier reach of their patrol zones. There was no reason to establish anything themselves or search for resources in as unforgiving and hostile an area as the mountains were, and in any case, Lightbearers were terrible at taking and holding territory. One only needed to watch their Crucible matches to observe how much of a challenge they found it.

Privately though, she suspected the Vanguard held some collective guilt over shooting the ship down during the Final Attempt. It was the first and last time humanity fired at a Ketch. All that could be assumed was that they felt something as they watched Skiffs scramble from it, packed to the brim with Eliksni and their belongings, to escape the fall from orbit. Precisely what that feeling was would remain a mystery.

Part of her was glad she didn't think to return to the ship sooner and dismantle it while on her rampage to remove all traces of the Devils, in spite of the collective trauma entrenched within it. The vessel was a piece of living history to Eliksni, one of the only original Ketches to survive the exodus from Riis all the way to the present day. Even if it could no longer fly, it deserved to be protected as a reward for not crumbling to pieces on itself after so long. Although that was the only reason. Others would have seen it burned and not blinked an eye.

Carefully picking her route, she skittered down the slope and jumped the last few metres down a sheer rock face to the base of the Ketch. Skeletons of shelters and workshops that used to sit outside in a jumble poked out from the ground like the bones from a carcass picked clean, tatters of canvas left hanging from the joints of the structures where they had been ripped out. Guard towers were unmanned and abandoned, and the hangar entrance was filled by a giant drift of snow that gathered high above her head. 

Testing its depth with a discarded branch close by before she stepped on it, Eramis tramped up its height with a practiced quickness, scrambling up the last few feet to reach the top and perch there. Below, the drift sank deep within the opening, undisturbed except the ruts and mounds cutting into the snow and the footprints leading to the entry doors. It dawned on her why the whispers were so persistent. Something was waiting. 

' _ Whoever it is can try to challenge me, this was my home once, _ ' she growled in the back of her throat. Fighting through the Ketch wasn't on her list of priorities, and just because there was one set of footprints didn't mean that more hadn't been hidden, or that another access point had been cut into the Ketch's frame. Half sliding and half walking into the hangar, she pushed forwards to the wide entry door. As the snow turned shallower, the shape of the footprints became clearer - Eliksni. A smaller set of individuals. Houseless scavengers must have gotten desperate to come there for salvage. 

The light on the door lock glowed green, yet they didn't give way at her approach. Slouching a little, she came to the scanner at the side of it and put her hand to the console, raising an eyebrow when it lit up and verified her presence. The doors started to open with a squeal before coming to a halt, mechanisms locked up from disuse. 

Eramis took hold of the upper door with both hands, bringing a foot up on top of the lower one and prying them apart. A wave of heat flooded out, alongside the red-orange lights that filled the corridor. Reaching in and pressing the back of her hand against the wall, vibrations hummed through it. ‘ _ More than what a generator could produce. That has to be the main power cable running...why? _ ' 

No alarms sounded, suggesting it wasn't activated by chance. Whoever was inside the ship had taken up residence, likely for the long term. Scavengers with any intelligence or interest in the ship would have stayed longer to uncover any secrets in its engineering. Discovering the centuries of kitbash jobs that had been done to maintain the ship, however, may have deterred them. None of the parts were of any worth, to her memory, and couldn't be removed from one another without breaking an unrelated component in the vessel's inner workings. It wouldn't stop an ex-Splicer or engineer from trying to uncover any 'secrets' within, though.

She pushed the doors apart further and squeezed through, letting them stay jammed open. ' _ If they didn't work properly before, they won't now. _ '

Striding through the endless and slightly crooked hallways where the interior had been damaged in the grounding, she arrived at the central hub of the Ketch, defined by the huge pillar that underpinned its superstructure and split the ship into several segments around circular sets of walkways along its length. Rows of screens that once showed bounties, unclaimed jobs, or messages from Barons lay dark and empty, and the Pilot Servitor built into the structure had been powered down. It was strange to think that just years ago the area would have been filled wall to wall with Devils and that the Ketch would have thrummed with activity. There was once a time where walking from one side to the other would have been a serious undertaking, a commute of sorts. Ketches weren’t designed for interstellar travel in the long term, and the population that eventually crammed into its passages reflected that.

Veering off to one side and into an alcove, a short corridor opened up into a long room filled with rows of lockers. Space was a premium on  _ Sepiks-Fel _ , being the main hub for the Devils. Its crowded confines left no room for personal belongings. Anything one owned that couldn't fit into a single narrow locker was distributed to someone less fortunate, or simply thrown into a waste receptacle. 

Most of the storage lockers had their doors ripped open and the contents emptied, although the room itself was bare. With no clutter and mess on the ground, it seemed as if the scavengers had cleaned up after themselves, leaving no trace. That, or everything was somehow of use to them. She doubted the latter, getting the feeling that Wethraks was going to be sorely disappointed.

At the far end, what was once her own locker was left untouched. Her name and identification number were still etched into the door, grimy and rusted. Nobody expected the Long Drift to be as long as it was, either. Her locker was likely re-assigned when she moved, but replacing her name with someone else’s was a misuse of limited resources. 

Sauntering over to it and straining to recall the combination on the way, she dialed it in with a faint hope that it hadn’t changed. To her surprise, it opened, hinges squealing. Inside was a single shock blade in its scabbard leaning up against the side, and nothing else. She frowned at it, unsure if she expected to find more despite knowing full well that most of her belongings were left and presumably stolen by the Reefborn Wolves who captured her  _ Devilship _ . Figuring it was a start if nothing else, she took it up and buckled the belt around her waist before shutting the door and turning to search for Wethraks's locker. Anything was better than forging herself a new sword, or using someone else's cast off as she did on Europa. 

Pacing around the rows, Eramis found his name on a locker nestled in the centre of the collection. She took out the datapad from the duffel bag and held it in one hand while the other input his combination, jiggling the door a few times when it refused to unlock. After one hard tug, it clicked and swung open, bringing it's entire contents with it. Piles of things fell out in a heap faster than she could slam the door closed again to catch it all, and she made a noise of irritation at it. "Sending someone else to do his clean-up," she muttered, gently shoving at the bottom of the pile to push it back inside without damaging anything. 

A photo fluttered out from the inside of the door, and she caught it with a lower hand. 

Upon closer examination, it was of Wethraks and his human, Lodask, standing on the hull of a downed Kings Skiff. A significantly younger Solkis knelt beside them, holding the head of the Skiff's Captain with a toothy grin. Back then, he only wore the top half of his helmet. He claimed it made him more relatable to the humans, but Lodask's surprised and horrified expression immortalised in print said otherwise. 

Examining it a beat longer, the Captain's head became her own. She dropped the picture like it was made of hot coals, drawing all four arms upwards and chittering at it in disgust. Unable to tell whether it was a lingering trick of the light from her nightmares in the previous day, or the Dark attempting to send a message, she decided to leave it until last to load into the bag. 

"Where do I begin?" she said to herself with a sigh. Looking at the heap, she suddenly understood why his Skiff seemed unusually tidy. Wethraks was a sentimental soul. Part of him seemed stuck in the past and unable to move on, While she couldn't blame him for the familiar feeling, cramming his worldly hoard into a single locker and hoping for the best wasn't a helpful way to deal with his nostalgia. 

Giving up and sitting down on the floor, Eramis propped the list up inside the lower shelf and began sifting through the pile like it was an archaeological dig site. Stacks of photographs collapsed and slid around as she sorted through the debris. Collecting the bulk of them up and tapping the stack of photos back into order against the ground, she flicked idly through them. Each photo brought back memories she thought were forgotten. Landscapes of London, Earth from low orbit, a handful of images of wildlife, and ‘selfies’ of himself and other Devils taken at varying angles. Calling the composition of any of them 'good' would be a stretch, but they were personal. Every picture she found slotted into the bag, and she eventually relented to scoop them all inside in one heap.

Once they were gone, more treasures emerged. A collection of replacement parts for his watch kept in a box, the service certificates and operations manuals to his Skiff, little toolkits for weapons maintenance, and all kinds of things taken from human salvage that she couldn't identify. At the bottom of the pile was a large tube, and she turned it over in her hands before realising it could be opened. Popping the lid off one end, she pulled out a glossy print and unfurled it to reveal a group photo of Ursaviks and all of his Barons dated to 2750. 

Spreading it wide with her lower hands, Eramis laughed a little to see that it survived. Although dwarfed by the other Barons, her younger self stood proudly off to the centre-right side of the group. Hardly any of them understood the purpose of lining up for a picture but chose to humour their Kell and his mate, as was evident from the litany of bemused and uncomfortable expressions among them. A few of the younger Guard members got the idea and beamed for the camera, but the rest of them were a lost cause. 

Rolling it back up after taking a few more seconds to look over it, she put the tube into the bag alongside everything else and examined the datapad. At the end of his section was a checkbox for a number of books and leaflets. "Books? There are no books," Eramis opened the locker again and scanned over it, furrowing her brow down at the pad again at the sight of its mostly bare interior. 

Her gaze caught a hole in the bottom shelf, bending over and hooking one claw into it. It shifted, and lifting it up revealed a false bottom filled with the aforementioned books - an ancient copy of ' _ Eliksni for Humans: Revised Editio _ n' and a much newer copy of its partner work, ' _ English for Eliksni: 10th Edition _ ', in amongst the reprints of the classics from Riis and smaller novels and pamphlets in English. 

' _This is more than I thought there would be. I need a chest,_ ' she glanced around in the vain hope that one might be close by, somehow disappointed when there wasn't. ' _And a sledge._ _He could have said there would be this much._ '

Wracking her brain for a few moments, it occurred to her that the nursery would have plenty of both. Pups accumulated 'stuff' by the day once mobile. Usually mostly junk that was already on the Ketch, but it needed to be stored somewhere until it could be disposed of or returned to its rightful owners. Scrolling past Wehtraks’s never-ending list showed that the House was in need of toys and nest material for hatchlings, in any case.

It needed to be done for their sake, but the very concept of entering the area gave her pause. She avoided entering the nursery deliberately, having seen the inside of it a handful of times in her life. A few years before the Final Attempt, she delivered a collection of pups to the matron who were taken from a pacifist settlement she ordered her crew to raid. Even then, she only did so because they climbed back on to her with every attempt Siriks made to remove them and divert their attention. She suspected her own scent was similar to their mother's, so in her eyes the pups were simply returned to where they would have originally belonged.

Dropping them off was fine, until it wasn’t. Their existence and insistence ruined her mood for the rest of the week, plagued by thoughts of if she should have taken the time to raise them since they were all seemingly so attached. Six months wasn't long, but failing to give them the skills to survive Dreghood in the climate of the time was guilt she grew to understand would have weighed on her for centuries. She swore off entering the nursery regardless, brushing off every request for her assistance on to someone else. 

She had the luxury of choosing where to go on the Ketch in days past. Now, as the unchecked boxes bored holes into her face, there was no such option. She pushed the heaving bag to one side and started the walk towards the northern wing of the ship where the nursery was nestled. Ascending the stairway to the upper levels, through the winding halls and past the large staircase leading to the Kell’s throne room, she almost wondered if she had taken the wrong set of passages. 

Following them down, her frontmost eye was drawn to the side of the corridor, recognising the passageway before she consciously realized. She slowed at a recess in the wall, hovering over it. ‘ _ My old nest area. _ ’ It wasn’t uncommon for Eliksni to have their own ‘rooms’ where their nests were scattered around the entirety of the ship, but the tiny space, the gap in the wall panels where she crammed her nest into and claimed as her own for years on end, tugged at her heart. Too much time had been lost staring in silence at the opposite wall, face aching in a way that was only possible from hours of sobbing in the wake of her mate’s death. 

The edges of the panel - a makeshift door - had worn down to bare metal where hundred of hands had touched it. At first, Siriks and others from her village had come to comfort her and encourage her in earnest that the Great Machine was still within their grasp. The younger ones came to her for inspiration, advice, and to vent and mourn their own lost families. As time went on, they visited less often, until they were replaced entirely by Phylaks, Kridis, Taniks and a handful of her fellow navigators who had fallen into the same pit of cynicism and exhaustion she lost herself to. While only a small space that was barely large enough for two Eliksni sat front to back, it was more than suitable for scheming and planning towards a better future and how empires should be run. 

At the reminder, the whispers started to clamour. She groaned to hear them after a few minutes of relative quiet. She forgot to savour the few minutes of almost silence in the time it took to sort through the lockers. Experiencing any kind of peace was a true blessing after years of constant chatter, whether real or 'imagined', but to hear them meant that she was presumably going the right way. Or the wrong one, depending on which way she looked at them. If they knew her better than she knew herself, then it was natural for them to speak up in proximity to somewhere where she used to find her greatest joys.

Pups needed to be kept in warm, Ether-rich surroundings, and so there was no better place than the furthest depths of the Ketch close to the primary engine. The nursery was in the far end of the corridor, marked by a mural painted on the door and walls leading up to it, of a mother cradling several bundles against a swirling green tinged sky and pink grasses. ' _This wasn't here last time_ ,' she approached the scanner and flexed her claws, clenching them into fists for a few seconds before she pressed her hand to the interface to unlock the doors. 

They slid open, revealing rows of soft off-yellow light glittering across the ceiling. Multicoloured curtains lined the long, wide corridor to hide most of the parenting-nests, and despite being evacuated in a hurry, the floors were clear and everything tidied away on to shelving units or cubby holes. The ransacked locker room being so tidy was unusual, but the nursery's cleanliness unnerved her. ' _Why would scavengers clear the entire Ketch?_ '

In the corner, a large trunk covered in white paint splatter caught her attention. Going over to it and lifting the lid, she chirped at it as a plethora of toys spilled out. On the surface, she picked out a pack of stacking spheres, pup-safe shock pistols filled with harmless foam pellets, various instruments in equally varying conditions, and some rough wooden carvings imitating vegetables. Devils hatchlings had no end of things to play with, and soon other pups would share in the same playthings. 

Shutting the chest as best she could, a sledge was also conveniently propped against the wall of one open nest-area. She pulled it behind her as she took a loop of the nursery’s cubby holes and shelves, taking a loop and piling the heaving sledge high with whatever could be balanced on it. By the time she came around to the entrance, multiple stacks containing everything on the list had been made. It would take several trips to empty everything out, and bizarrely she was glad for her prosthetic legs. They couldn't get tired and start aching from all the walking back and forth. 

The next challenge was to get the sledge down the steps and uneven walkways, and then back again in one piece ' _If only he let me bring someone else who would keep our secret. There must be more Devils in the House._ ' Heaving it up and testing its weight to ensure that the rope handle wouldn't snap off at the first opportunity, she dragged the first load out of the nursery and down the corridor.

At the junction where the corridors to the nursery and Kell's wing of the Ketch met, she paused to assess the plan of action. Walking backwards down the staircase and balancing the sledge so that it didn't bounce on each step and dislodge everything seemed like the most sensible option for the lighter loads. Unfortunately, anything heavier than the first collection of items would need to be carried individually, prolonging her task.

"I'll be doing this until I die," she grumbled, going around to the front of the sledge. Checking over her shoulder to watch the depth of each step, she lifted it and began to ease it downwards. Her gaze flicked over to the staircase leading to the throne room as she watched its balance, and she stopped dead. 

The lights leading up the grand staircase weren't on before. Squinting in the red tinged light, she swore that dark smoke emanated from each step, unsure if her eyes were deceiving her in the difference in lighting, As she stared at it and attempted to untangle whether it was real or fake, her spine prickled. The whispers pressed against her skull and spoke,

'Go to the throne.'

Dread filled her chest, stomach fluttering with butterflies. Every part of her body said to stop and ignore the order, but in the deepest recesses of her mind, something beyond her control drew her towards the great hall. Dropping the sledge handle down to leave it balanced on a step, she moved in a trance back up the stairway and towards the giant doors that concealed the throne room. They were wide open. An invitation. 

She lingered in the entryway, whispers turning into a cacophony of voices speaking over one another. Trembling, she found herself rooted to the spot. It was fine to march into the hall with her closest crewmates at her back, but alone it became daunting, impassable. Nothing was there except for the throne itself at the far end, wreathed in twisted metal and lit by bright spotlights stolen from the City walls. Red silks covered the wall behind it, turning the otherwise dark hall a blindingly bright crimson.

Guards should have stood stock still inside of each door. Radio chatter used to filter through the air, and screens lining the walls were filled with constant streams of information managed by the Kell’s advisor, if and when he had one. To see the hall empty was eerie, evoking a feeling that she should turn around and seal the scene away. Not a soul else needed to see the seat of the House abandoned

'An offering behind the curtain.' the whispers said, sensing her unease.

'Reach out and take it.'

Eramis stayed put. Offerings from the Dark were against its nature. It couldn't give. It understood the notion and what 'giving' meant, but on its own terms it could not act in a way that complied with the common idea of it. All it could do was take, in whatever form it decided it would do so. After the nightmare of the previous day, she wasn't sure if following its orders would pose any benefit. If she disobeyed them though, there was no telling how they would retaliate, or escalate the 'offers'.

'Go on. There is nothing to be afraid of.'

'Look upon what you always desired.'

' _I don't get a choice in this, either._ ' Eramis felt her heartbeats pounding in her chest, but stepped forward and crossed the room, taking the short staircase up to the throne. _'It will be fine. There is nothing to be scared of. I'm no Dreg. I'm better than showing this much fear._ '

Pushing aside the curtain opened up the nest area of the old Kells, larger than she expected. It was at least double the size of the bridge she used to call home on her own Ketch as a Devil, with its own catering unit and swathes of storage space for weapons and personal belongings alike. Off to one side was an oval shaped nest, slightly longer than it was wide. As her eyes adjusted to the dark from the bright light shining outside, a small mound in the nest became apparent.

Her nose twitched again, and the smell of death assaulted her senses. ' _How could something die so deliberately in the Kell's nest?_ ' Plenty of creatures met their end in the labyrinth of vents as they tried to escape the harsh weather and got lost on their way out, and plenty more Dregs got wedged in corners of the shafts during routine maintenance. Something of the size of the lump crawling through the vent hatches and into the nest was suspicious.

Stepping over to it, she squinted down at the nest and gasped, hearts plummeting. 

Four tiny blue eyes blinked up at her blearily, hidden beneath the red robes of its caretaker. 

A hatchling.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not comfortable reading about dead animals and / or preparation of dead animals for eating, skip ahead to 'As she ate, her gaze settled over the grave site' once Eramis is moving a deer away from the gravesite..
> 
> Also please excuse me, I use pups and hatchlings interchangeably. Two words for the same thing - a baby Eliksni! :)
> 
> 28/2/2021 - This chapter has been given a small addition based off content removed from Chapter 3.

Eramis's legs gave way in shock, thunderstruck. She stared, glass eyed, at the pup and the dead body of its mother in the nest. It was Athrys - except it wasn't, Athrys died centuries ago. She never saw the inside of _Sepiks-Fel_. 

In the blink of an eye, the Ketch interior fell away, replaced by howling winds under a dark sky. Her home, her nursery was destroyed, reduced to rubble as fires blazed and blew clouds of ash across what was once her village. Athrys wasn’t with her. They watched the Great Machine leave, aghast when the sky was blotted out and its radiance was no more. She sent her to collect up their newest litter, a sixth sense telling her that their way of life was about to change dramatically. As she ran to help the elders, a blood curdling scream tore through her like the sharpest blade.

Clawing through the remains of their home and begging for a response, a hand reaching out from the ruins, she screamed her mate’s name. Anything, to say that she and their children were safe. She scrambled for a hold on a broken pillar, lifting the largest piece with all her might and straining her muscles to throw it away. She screamed her name again, cut off in a choked sob.

Beneath it, crushed, was Athrys curled tight around four bundles. Casualties. 

She was too late. She couldn't save them. It should have been her.

Eramis crumpled, tears streaming down her face as she gripped the front of her helm and screwed her eyes shut. 'It's _not Athrys. This isn't our pup. You're in the Devils' Ketch. This is someone else._ ' she repeated in her head like a mantra, her breath quickening. The whispers clamoured, desperate and interested. Engaged. 

"What do you _want_ from me?!" she shouted at the voices, words catching in her throat as she fought to speak. "Punishment? Torture?! You cast me out, I mean nothing to you! Leave me!"

The pup squealed, frightened by her outburst. It shied back against its mother, hiding in the folds of her robe. Barely formed mandibles flexed, and it snuffled, unable to click at her while its fangs hadn't grown in beyond pin-sharp stumps.

Eramis blinked her eyes open and stared down at it, paralysed and guilty. Against the paltry threat display from the pup and the sound of her own ragged breathing, the whispers spoke,

'She is a gift.'

'Forge a path with her.'

A chill ran down her spine. She thought Stasis a gift. All she had to do was enter the Pyramid and take it. Believing in its kindness ended in her near-demise, and to consider what the Dark wanted from her in a defenceless pup sent her stomach churning. She wasn’t strong enough. A full grown Eliksni was one thing to influence, but directing a hatchling to her was inconceivable. 

' _I can’t let the Dark control me again, I can make my own decisions,’_ her mind raced. There had to be a way to reject the Dark. Speaking to it hadn’t worked. Leaving the visions alone and hoping they would go away on their own hadn’t worked in the past. Direct action was the only way to deny it the pleasure of authority. ‘ _I should kill her. She isn’t real!_ ’ 

Reaching into the nest and picking the pup up, her fangs sunk hard into her hand as she fought against her. Eramis flinched and hissed, gripping it tighter to stop it from moving and forcing herself to ignore her desperate, terrified cries. She held her up and calculated the fastest way to kill her. Even if she was a horrific hallucination from the Dark, she deserved the dignity of a quick death. Her tangibility and defensiveness meant nothing. The visions were indistinguishable from reality, bringing with them all the perception needed to make the point it wanted to. 

She couldn’t see the point to this one. It needed to be eradicated. 

As she met eyes with the hatchling, seconds stretched into eternity. Rage and cold determination gave way to mother-strong instinct, a savage love and desire to protect such a tiny creature that threatened to sweep her away. She was so small, innocent to the world and left entirely alone. Her claws were pale and not yet hardened, flecks of fuzz peeking out from the simple red tunic that covered her where her soft shell had yet to fully grow in. Even with bleary, just opened eyes and a mind that was weeks from forming permanent memories, she already knew pain and suffering. And her mother didn't protect her so fiercely to the end just for her only hatchling to be killed beside her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. Loosening her grip on the child, she brought her close to her chest and swallowed hard, forcing a maternal purr into her throat. "There... everything is okay. You'll be safe with me."

Perplexed and still wary, the pup whined in protest and wriggled to get away from her. In a flash, she escaped out of her arms and plopped back into the nest, returning to her mother's side.

"No, you can't-" Eramis trailed off. No doubt she scared the hatchling, but her persistence was strange. ' _Is she truly dead? Is she real, or imagined?_ ' Taking a deep, shuddering breath in a feeble attempt to allay her own fears and stop herself from shaking, she crawled into the nest. Hesitant, she brushed a fingertip over the dead Eliksni's neck, pressing into her leathery skin to feel for a pulse. She was stone cold, stiff, not yet decaying but soon to. 

Trailing her hand down the mother's robe, she twitched the cloth aside to reveal the hatchling fully, to which she wriggled backwards and bunched up on herself, ready to pounce. Paying her no mind, for if she did lunge at her she would have all the power of a pointed foam pellet, she felt another rumple beneath her mother's robes. A solid lump. 

' _Oh no, please, not a whole litter,_ ' she had to stop, every inch of her body growing numb with fear. Nausea rose up in her stomach, unsure whether she had the strength to continue investigating. ' _Please, don't let there be more!_ '

Steeling her nerves and lifting the fabric up, she almost collapsed with relief to find a small plush toy. It was a touch bigger than the hatchling, with blue buttons for eyes and a matted strip of rabbit fur as hair. To say its chunky body was well stuffed was an understatement, and it somehow only made it more life-like. Picking it up and turning it over in her hands to ensure no part of it could be taken as organic, she brought it closer to the pup and let her take hold of the toy.

She trilled, peering out from behind its comfort plush. Her face - near identical to its mother’s - was lined with concern. They stared at each other for a long time, eventually breaking eye contact as she buried herself under the toy so that only her backmost eyes were visible.

"You're still worried," Eramis removed her helmet and put it down in her lap, letting the pup see her face. She quietened, head tilted quizzically to one side and eyes wide as it worked out who she was. Although unable to read its mind, she guessed that it thought her with the helmet on and her without were two different Eliksni. "I won't hurt you. My name is Eramis."

The pup squeaked, recognising she was being spoken to but too young to formulate a response.

"What did your mother name you?" she didn't know whether she was asking the pup or the whispers, but both remained silent. After a few heartbeats with no response, she said to her, "Fine, I'll have to give you a new name...Primiks?" 

The suggestion earned herself a blank stare. 

"No. That sounds like a Servitor. What about Mirikis? Do you like that?"

She didn't react, only adjusting herself around the plush and snuffling. Her gaze remained fixated on her face. She imagined it was because of the scarring and her missing eyes, on top of natural curiosity as to who she was in her entirety. 

Eramis wracked her brain. Athrys named most of their pups on Riis. She kept a running list of potential name ideas pinned to the inside of a cupboard, ones that she'd heard from her fellow artisans or while out and about. Sometimes they borrowed from the world around them, from flowers and types of grasses found in the gardens. Others took from myths and legends from their world and beyond. Every time her mate asked if she had any suggestions, however, she blanked.

The problem only worsened as the Eliksni language shifted upon arrival on Earth. Devils Dialect lended itself heavily to human tongues, especially those found in the European Dead Zones. They offered a lot more creativity when mixed with traditional naming conventions, but also raised the difficulty level when it came to putting words and suffixes together that sounded correct. By the time human cultural artefacts had worked their way into their names, she had given up trying to improve her skills. Naming things what they were was the most convenient, stress-free route.

The pup was a lost little thing, forgotten by what should have been her House and everyone else around her. Assuming her mother had no House anymore and nobody to support her, she had been left abandoned by all. Nobody knew she existed, aside from herself and the Darkness.

It struck her, "Praetrak?"

Praetrak looked upwards and chittered. At her age, language recognition was loose, but her name had to be close for it to garner a proper reaction. Either that, or she merely liked the sound of it.

"Is that your name?" Eramis smiled encouragingly. "Come here, Praetrak, let me see you."

Proving her theory correct, she scuttled out and away from her mother, lopsided as she brought the plush with her. She scooped her up into her arms and held her close, watching as all four of the pup's arms flailed to find a grip on her front and cling on.

"Good instincts, you're strong," she murmured, all her anxieties melting away to rest her hand at the pup's back. "Look at you. Where did you come from? Travelers? Was your mother looking for help?" It didn’t bear thinking about that her mother may have been drawn there by the Dark, the same as she had been. It was too heart-wrenching a possibility to think about the parallel - a mother wanting what was best for her own, desperate enough to travel through treacherous conditions back to what may have been her home in years before. Only to be betrayed and killed for a purpose beyond mortal conception. 

If she wasn’t there because of that, though, it didn’t make sense as to why she was present, unless she was an exile or an ex-Devil seeking shelter. If she wasn’t, it raised the question of where her red robes were found. For her to proclaim allegiance to a destroyed House was strange, and it was unlikely that her clothing was stolen. The majority of Devils regalia was burned or melted down even before she got her hands on dismantling the House, to her understanding. What survived was apparently kept by House Light, although the stitching and detailing had been stripped away to replace it with their own insignias.

She wasn't one of her Earth-loyalists, either. Her face and scent were totally foreign, but that wasn't surprising when the Devils consistently out-populated every other House. Every member who wasn't part of her crew or someone of direct concern to herself turned into a faceless blur after a while. 

"Why don't we see if I can find where you came from?" she suggested, getting to her feet and continuing to cradle her new pup securely. Approaching the curtain, she lifted it with one hand and checked the hall before going out into the open. Part of her was almost surprised that the dream-Solkis wasn't lingering outside like a ghoul. Many Eliksni spoke in hushed tones about his spirit haunting the Ketch after his untimely death, and she wasn't inclined to disbelieve them after the nightmare of the previous day. The Darkness chose him as a vessel deliberately.

Praetrak looked around as she walked, curious to where she was being taken. Every few steps, she glanced up at her face, at one point reaching up to climb closer and into the crook of her neck. Eramis let her move, wincing a little at what felt like hundreds of tiny claws pricking into her skin. She tilted her head to stretch her neck out so she had more room to move, and eventually the pup settled, like a hot water bottle pressed into the side of her face and neck.

Entering the quarterdeck, she located the maintenance hatch and flipped the main breakers on. Spotlights flickered to life, and large displays hued the workspace in blue as they loaded up. She chirruped, impressed. Only a highly skilled technician could hope to bring the Ketch's abandoned systems back to life. Its life support systems required a practiced and precise touch to repair, not something that the average Eliksni could learn to do. For the navigation and communications tech to function as expected on demand was admirable. Whoever she was, Praetrak's mother had ambition and drive.

"Sit here." she unlatched Praetrak from her neck and placed her down on the closest workstation. She couldn't get into too much trouble there, but she hesitated and watched her for a few minutes regardless. The pup studied the buttons and dials around her, reaching out to fiddle with them as if she were put on a particularly interactive play mat. She let out little squeaks as she tapped at everything, babbling to herself.

' _She must be real._ ' Eramis thought. Her waking visions interacting with anything other than herself were so exceedingly rare that she could count on two hands the number of times they had occurred. Usually, they existed for a singular purpose. The whispers had identified her every memory and experience, gaining a deeper understanding of herself than could be conceived of. Catering messages to appeal specifically to her psyche to communicate was supposedly the only way the Dark could speak that would mean something.

She had grown accustomed to its mental tests and attempts to deceive her - the shadowy figures playing at her peripheral vision, the nightmares, the all consuming apparitions and not-quite flashbacks that others had to shake her out of. And Praetrak wasn't the first hatchling to bother her. Usually, it was her own litters she saw, reliving memories that were close to what they truly were but twisted. She feared that if she counted the number of times she had seen them be mutilated or murdered while helpless to do anything, she would go insane.

To offer a being which had heartbeats, and that could be handled and manipulated in all manner of ways and remain consistent meant that the chances of her being a true apparition of the Darkness were slim. And as much as Eramis doubted the possibility, if Praetrak was a construct of the Dark, then she wasn't malicious. Nor was she benevolent. She just _was_. Thinking of what she saw as good or evil was the wrong approach. Visions were situations to take note of or avoid. Lessons to think on.

Turning her attention back to the screens and praying Praetrak didn't destroy anything for the brief moment her back was to her, she activated the Ketch's radio system and waited, watching it load up and attempt to bounce off any transmissions in the area or further afield. She dialled it down to communicate only to receivers on Earth, wary of any Lightbearers in orbit that may be drawn in by stray transmissions.

In the reflection of the screen, she caught her own strained expression. Unclenching her jaw and dropping her shoulders, she did her best to nudge the memories seeking to distract her away. Workstations on navigation decks were broadly the same, but a presence seemed to be nagging at her back. Nothing more than the memory of her Kell at the time watching in barely hidden disappointment and anger while she hid her panic and realized her catastrophic mistake in leading the Ketch astray from the scouting drones, and therefore the Great Machine.

Some nights, before the Dark came to torment her, she still dreamt of the sickening fear and desperate fight to avoid being frozen forever in cryosleep for her error. Good Eliksni were lost to those pods, never to be awakened. Their existence reduced to nothing more than jetsam floating in the endless cold between stars, dumped when viewed as nothing more than unnecessary weight slowing the vessel down.

Watching the scanner waver and find no response aroused the same feelings. Every local frequency was silent. Despite her unsettlement, she reminded herself to not be surprised, and that there was no dire problem in not finding open channels to bounce back off. The only Eliksni nearby would be small nomadic groups who tended to open their comms channels for just an hour or two each day. Communicating with them was an exercise in patience unless they were explicitly told to remain in contact. ' _They'll send a message if they need to._ ' 

Mood dampened, she turned back around. Praetrak trilled in accomplished delight to make eye contact with her, chewing on a button that she had popped off the interface. Others were scattered around herself, and one had rolled to the floor.

"Don't eat that," Eramis gently worked the button out of her mouth, careful to not yank against her soft fangs. Praetrak worked remarkably quickly and quietly. Other pups around her age could only dream of having her dexterity and co-ordination. "I should find you real food. Have you eaten recently?"

Praetrak squeaked, blissfully ignorant to the meaning of what she said. Whether she was hungry or not didn't precisely matter, though. Hatchlings could have voracious appetites in their first few weeks. In the times they weren't climbing all over their caretakers or asleep underneath an Ether diffuser, they were searching for food. Assuming that a hatchling was always hungry was a safe bet. 

' _I have to be your mother for now_ ,' she mused. _'And teach you what a mother would._ ' If nobody picked up her transmissions and she truly was alone in the mountains, then looking after a lost pup was going to be more than a short term ordeal. Leaving her alone was no good for her development, so taking her around with her on any errands - like emptying the Ketch or hunting for food - would be enriching. Young pups learned best by observation and before they could speak they were sponges for information. Once they learned to talk, the curiosity only intensified until they fully matured. 

"Come with me. We're going outside," Eramis decided, ripping her cloak free of its fasteners. She pulled it over her back and shoulder, gathering each end in bunches together before trying it in a knot at one side of her chest. Picking Praetrak up and slipping her inside the loose fabric at her front, the pup rested her head into her clavicle once she felt secure enough and the rest of the cloak was pulled up to her neck. "Is that comfortable?" she asked.

Praetrak popped her head up and made a quiet noise of appreciation. Taking advantage of how close she was, she worked a hand out of the sling to pat her face on her blind side.

She chuckled. Normally anyone looking too closely at the scarred side of her face was cause for her to snap at them, let alone touching it without her permission. Given that she was a pup and had likely never seen anyone with such an injury, she could make an exception. "Yes, my eyes are missing."

Seemingly nonplussed by her lack of eyes, Praetrak examined her a heartbeat longer. She tried to work out what was going through her mind. Something about herself must have been fascinating for her to stare for such a prolonged period. ‘ _Maybe I look like someone she knows. That’s why she’s so trusting._ ’

Her pup’s gaze shifted over her shoulder, mumbling something indistinct and pointing behind them. Eramis braced herself before she looked, expecting some kind of horror to be behind them. Instead, it was the plush toy, laying with its short limbs splayed out over the console. 

“He’s coming too?” she asked, picking it up. She didn’t know why she was calling it a ‘he’, and it wasn’t like anyone would correct her. “He can fit.” she said, squeezing the toy into the sling so it nestled beside Praetrak.

She seemed pleased with the arrangement, settling down and rumbling softly as her arms wound around it. Against her chest, she felt like an idling motor that was keeping her running. She didn’t realize how much she missed that feeling.

Content that there was nothing else required, Eramis made her way out of the deck and down to the bottom level of the Ketch. Passing by the locker room and retrieving the first wire rifle she saw, she checked it was loaded and safe to use before heading out into the snow. Although it was pitch dark, her vision adjusted until the way forward was clear, journeying up the drift again and out into the wilds. 

Following the old path that ran the forest, she found that she missed the days when Devils would move freely through the area. Through the entirety of the planet, in fact. Deep down, she knew that what her House wanted was security. Some were more overt in their desires than others, particularly their leaders. Anyone who spent any time around Ursaviks saw his logic in putting down roots in a permanent base, weary of constant travel and roaming threats. When London fell, some fled to Bangkok. When Bangkok was infiltrated, the Devils Ketch was the last bastion. And when that was shot down from low orbit, there was no point in fleeing again if it could be lived in on the ground. 

It was a shame the Red Legion had ruined what they had. Building a House was a slow process with no resources of their own to use. She could only imagine how things would've been different if she could have ruled House Salvation from the Ketch's depths instead of being forced to strike out on her own. Both paths had their merits and risks, but it would have been simpler to work from something that the House owned already and that others were familiar with.

She continued on into the night, Praetrak dozing peacefully from the rhythmic movements of trudging through shin deep snow. Unlike at the outpost near the City, her protective bodysuit proved its worth as she wandered through the forest in search of something to eat. Her thoughts strayed in equal measure, mulling over what to do once everything that Wethraks had requested was returned to him. Staying with him wasn't an option. He had matured greatly, but he was only tolerable in short bursts. 

To that end, staying with anyone posed significant uncertainty. Two Eliksni traveling together were easier to find than one lone once-Devil, and there was nobody left that she would place her full trust in. Wethraks was only able to be relied upon because he had a tangled web of connections on all sides and knew what to say, when, and to who. Imparting information about other Eliksni in specific terms wasn't something he dealt in - like Variks, he was nosy and liked the idea of control. The difference was that one would throw her under an oncoming Pike at the slightest perceived offense, and the other would ignore it and move on for the sake of his nosiness.

Keeping her own company still seemed like the best option - but not in the Skiff. It was good for nothing but scrap, it almost wasn't worth the time to repair it if not for her acquaintance's request. Traveling around the world on foot or with a stolen Sparrow - not a Pike, because they were too unwieldy and unpredictable in their making - wasn't a terrible idea, but it left herself wide open to be shot in the head by a Hunter from miles away. And that was all without considering how Praetrak would be cared for, assuming nobody came to collect her.

Preoccupied by her thoughts, she almost didn't notice a doe meandering between the tree trunks as it foraged for food. Eramis stopped and tapped Praetrak, nudging her head out of the sling to make her look at the creature and watch the process of the kill. Crouching down, she inched closer. A branch cracked underfoot and she froze, certain that it made eye contact with her for a pause that stretched into eternity. She exhaled when it dropped its head back to the foliage again, and stalked forward. Raising the rifle, she closed one eye and aimed through the scope at the doe's heart, waiting for the rustling of the forest in the low breeze to still so she could focus on the kill. 

The wind dropped, silence filling the air as the doe continued to nose through frozen grass, unaware. Eramis squeezed the trigger. 

The shot rang out and echoed through the forest, masking the deer’s yelp and bolt away to safety through the undergrowth. Lowering her weapon, she waited until the sound of crashing faded and the forest was quiet once again. "A clean shot," she murmured, more for Praetrak's benefit than her own. "Now we wait." Following a deer in its death throes would only make it run faster and further, or come to injure itself and suffer unnecessarily. 

Praetrak cooed and shifted around in the sling, spinning upside down and popping out at the bottom of it. She caught her in one hand before she could fall, followed swiftly by the plush joining her. Exposed and free of the cloth covering, her pup shivered, fluff on her body ruffling up to keep her warm. 

On instinct, Eramis tilted her body so that her pup was shielded from the worst of the breeze, hoping that the warmth emanating from her suit and the thick wool from her cloak would warm her sufficiently if she didn’t want to stay inside of the carrier. However, she had enough experience to know that if a pup was fidgeting, then it indicated that she was bored, or perhaps interested in participating somehow. Thinking for a second, she rose and brought her over to the ruts the deer had made in the snow.

"These are her tracks. Following them means we can find her," she explained patiently, lowering Praetrak towards them while cupped in her hand. "See if you can follow her scent."

Praetrak craned her neck to sniff at the bloody hoof prints. She crawled free from her palm and dropped into a snow drift that was deeper than it seemed, disappearing bodily so that only her back half was visible.

Eramis waited to see if she would move. "... Praetrak?"

Her pup didn't shift, and as she went to rescue her she suddenly turned and jumped, latching on to her arm with a joyful laugh. At mere weeks old, she had already mastered the stalking games that pups liked to play.

Eramis laughed with her, scooping her up. She got loose again not a moment later, scuttling down the trail like one of the cleaning robots on Europa. She raised her eyebrow at how steadily she moved in spite of the snow rising over her head once it was pressed to the ground, watching her push a trail through like a bulldozer. She kept pace with her pup as she continued, letting her find her own way and gently guiding her where she strayed. Watching a pup discover her world was always rewarding. Although she may have been a touch too young for such an exercise, she seemed to be enjoying it, letting out little squeaks and snuffles whenever the scent trail grew stronger.

Continuing on, pre-dawn light began to filter through the trees, illuminating the trail. Her mouth watered in anticipation. Wethraks's snacks the day prior were satisfying for a few hours, but she forgot her own hunger in the turmoil of resurrection. Fresh, warm meat was a staple that she hadn't had access to in decades, having to subsist off Ether alone and the rare scraps she could steal from the guards while their backs were turned during her daily recess. Europa was barren of prey for the most part, and not even she had a desire to discover what the creatures moving beneath the ice sheets were.

After a while longer of searching, Praetrak sat back and looked around, sneezing out the snow that had gotten up her nose. She looked up to Eramis, raising all four arms and waving them with a little cry.

"Oh, are you too cold?" She crouched down and picked her up, brushing the frost from her tunic and around her face. "You did excellent work, Praetrak! I'm so proud of you. Shall I finish and let you rest?"

Praetrak tilted her head slightly in what she assumed to be a nod, then climbed down one arm and slotted herself back into the sling. She shivered against her chest, adjusting so that the fabric around her was tight to ensure what little warmth there was stayed trapped within it.

Blood spatters grew larger towards the end of the trail, frozen dirt and chunks of snow scuffed up in the ground where the doe had faltered before collapsing. 

Eramis slowed and came to a stop at the edge of the treeline, looking up to check her surroundings. The gleaming white and red helms of her previous Kells and Archons stared back at her, posted on pikes at her eye level. Snow piled up in the crooks of their helmets, layered in ice where they had thawed and refrozen in the space of hours, over and over again. It reminded her of how she must have looked, encased in Stasis crystals. 

"The grave site?" she shook her head and blinked, unsure whether to believe her eyes. ' _Convenient that it would run here._ _Too convenient._ '

Praetrak popped her head out, peeping and shuffling around to see what was going on and where they had arrived. She hushed her with a click of her mandibles, scanning the area for any lingering trace of the Dark. The whispers were quiet, nothing but background noise buzzing in her consciousness. 

The doe lay dead over Solkis's grave, and the sight unsettled her. Doubt gnawed at her mind. _'Did he do all this and lead me here? Or is the Darkness simulating him?_ ' she wondered. For once, the distinction did matter. While she preferred not to give superstitious beliefs the time of day, everything matched up to the hushed legends told between cell walls. Regardless of who it was, he or the Darkness had a purpose and a message to give.

Stepping forward cautiously into the graveyard, she made her way swiftly to the dead deer and paused to make 'eye contact' with Solkis's helmet. "If this was your doing, you need to be clear. You wouldn't be the first to live in my mind," she said to it. 

The whispers shifted and changed to collective, condescending laughter. Like they thought her as naïve a hatchling as Praetrak.

'Trust your instincts.'

'Strength in old bonds. Not in old leaders.'

"...Never mind." Eramis sighed, heaving the carcass over to the edge of the yard. It would have been nice to be contacted by another voice to provide a separate point of view, but it was too optimistic a thought. Besides that, Solkis had unwavering opinions. Longing for his berating and constant existence in her subconscious was nothing but looking at the past with rose tinted glasses.

She dropped the deer down on the ground and crouched over it, chirruping at Praetrak to get her attention. Her pup's head swivelled around, squinting in the dull blue light.

"Watch what I do," Eramis angled herself so that she could see as much as possible. Taking her dagger, she crouched between the doe's back legs and sliced upwards through its belly to expose its organs. Reaching deep inside and cutting through its diaphragm and then up into its chest cavity, she took the flat of her hands and pulled the organs out. "You need to be careful removing these. If you catch its stomach, it will spoil the meat. We leave these for the predators."

Getting her claws further into the animal, she removed its heart and liver. "These are for you," she spoke, placing them on the ground and beginning to cut them into mincemeat. "To keep you strong."

Praetrak slipped out of the sling, climbing quickly down her body and to the ground at the sight of fresh meat. Before she could react, she stuffed her face into the bloody pile and started eating with speed and determination that would put most feeding frenzies she had witnessed on her own Ketch to shame. 

She chuckled, working around her pup and sliding over more scraps every few seconds. Within minutes, most of both organs were demolished, and Praetrak sat back and trilled, face as red as her tunic as she smiled widely.

"Adult Eliksni would be satisfied with those. Were you hungry?" she asked, moving around to the doe's head. She hooked her claws through the skin around its ear, pulling it free. "Here," she held it out to her pup.

Little claws took hold of the ear and sniffed it, inspecting it thoroughly before she chirped and held it close to its body. 

Eramis went to correct her about how it was something to chew on, then decided against it. There were bigger battles to fight than convincing her it was to sharpen her fangs on and not a toy. Leaving Praetrak to her new plaything, she sawed through the carcass to split it in half. Her stomach growled to smell its blood. Half of the deer would go to Wethraks in a gesture of goodwill, but the rest were hers to feast on. 

Ripping one leg from the deer's body, she bit into it, devouring fur and flesh alike as her hunger grew ravenous. The involvement of higher powers in bringing her to it didn't matter in her mind. Solid food after years of Ether was an experience to behold. She shut her eyes and savoured the mouthful, relieved for the offering. 

As she ate, her gaze settled over the grave site. Funerals used to be an affair shared by a Ketch and all the Skiffs that skulked directly around it, but she couldn't recall precisely when the ceremonies stopped. After some time, it became too costly to hold the members of a crew up to mourn every loss. It morphed to a day of remembrance that fewer and fewer Devils paid attention to with time and disconnect. 

For her, it was too important to forget. In the Prison, she remained in her cell to observe the day instead of fighting, much to the amusement and taunting of the Wolf guards. It felt too disrespectful to the memories of those lost to do anything otherwise. Eliksni fought and died for her to live her life, and even if she didn't know most of them personally, they were worth more than a passing thought. 

Kells and Archons kept the privilege of a ceremony once the lesser members of the House were forgotten, but they would be attended by more than the Ketch or Lair they lived on, in a bizarre game of who could show the most respect and honour to their leader. Oftentimes, the opposite was achieved, disrespecting their memory by allowing themselves to collapse into long nights of violence and bloodshed in bids to fight and stake claims as Kell of the House. 

She wasn't innocent, and still counted herself lucky that Solkis let her go and declared her lost dignity and wounded pride punishment enough. Others were not as blessed, meeting similar ends to her dream-self. 

The gravesite offered an opportunity that had long since been abandoned. A body couldn't be left to fester in the Ketch, not in the Kell's nest, and Praetrak's mother was worthy of the utmost respect - a mother, an engineer, who had died protecting her pups. On Riis, she would have been immortalised as a saint-like figure in her community for her contributions and devotion. Some would call it blasphemous to bury a lowly Vandal amongst Kells, but if anyone deserved the honour, it was her. 

Wiping her hands off in the snow to avoid dirtying her cloak, she watched Praetrak pretend to feed her plush, pressing the deer’s ear into his mouth and making little noises as if he was eating it. A slight smile spread over both their faces - for wholly different reasons, but they shared the same base emotion. Happiness. Contentment. They both had their ‘jobs’ to do. She would protect Praetrak, and Praetrak would offer a rekindled flame. The innocence of childhood. Caring for others weaker than herself. Forgetting the heartlessness required to survive as a Devil - to survive through the twists and turns of her life.

She was a new path in herself, with no need to forge it. Maybe, just once, the Dark had provided something of genuine emotional use. And maybe Wethraks was right. The time of Kell and House was over, at least in personal terms. She had nothing left to Kell, and to watch over a child wasn’t Kellship. It was nurturing. A concept that was past recollection for her people. 

Vengeance was all well and good, and still deserved by those who wronged her. But there were bigger priorities. Praetrak’s mother deserved her burial, and Praetrak deserved safety.

She extended a finger to her after a few minutes, and three tiny fingers wrapped around it. "Let's go home. I need to do something."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Praetrak = a good, lost thing.  
> Comes from the Latin 'praeteritus', meaning 'left out / lost' and Eliksni -ak, meaning 'a good thing', very roughly translated.  
> I don't speak Latin and can't personally claim the Eliksni translation here either. That work belongs to Sarsion. And for all we know that translation might be incorrect.
> 
> A fun fact for this chapter.: When I was drafting this, I had a note comparing Praetrak to moving like a giant isopod. I wanted to keep that description until I realized Eramis wouldn't know what one of those is :pensive:


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, the start of this is depressing as all hell. I am sorry.

In the time it took to return Praetrak and the carcass to the Ketch, the sun rose. It did nothing for the biting chill in the air, only shining off the snow and turning the world a blinding white. Days were short in the deep northern winter, though the sunlight was just as intense.

Praetrak fell asleep on the long walk home, comfortable and warm after her meal and still clinging to the doe's ear. Eramis made her a nest inside a cabinet once back on the quarterdeck, safe and warm beneath a heat lamp and unaware of anything she was doing. Part of her wondered if it was worth waking her solely to offer closure on her mother’s passing, but all it would do was upset her for reasons she had no capabilities of fully comprehending. Hatchlings were keenly perceptive of the emotions around them, and the last thing she wanted was to experience any grief and pass it on to her. She’d been through too much in her short lifespan already. 

She tore down a banner hanging from the walls, wrapping the mother’s body in it before retrieving her helmet and wiping it down with an edge of the silk that had ripped off. Burials required full honours, which meant at minimum ensuring that her armor was in as good a condition as it could be and she was clean of any dirt or blood. It wouldn't be acceptable to attend a Kell's funeral in half her armor, so the same went for Praetrak's mother.

Carrying her light frame back along the footsteps she left on the first outing, she returned to the grave site and to the point she had marked out for her amongst the row. A site adjacent to the Kells that pointed in the direction of the forest she entered from. Not in line with them, and with no claim that she was on an equal standing. Anyone who came across the site would only be confused to see an unmarked grave. 

Between the whispers and the breeze blowing across, she could almost hear the old leaders shouting her down. They would despise her for showing such kindness to a nameless, borderline banner-less Eliksni, but she couldn't find it in her to care. The Dark said that the only way to proceed was to ignore the old divisions and continue as one force. She didn't need its influence to agree on that front, even if it meant temporarily ignoring an ingrained social hierarchy. Either she was buried with them or she was left to the predators, no better than the entrails of prey.

Unhooking the shovel from where it was tucked into her sling, she dug down into the snow, shovelling deeper through frozen earth until her hands were numb and her arms burned from exertion. The grave wasn't deep, but it would suit the purpose it needed and the ground would freeze again within hours. A bear or wolf wouldn’t be able to uncover and devour her. 

Once she had dug far enough, she laid the shovel down without a word and lifted the body, lowering with care and ensuring the banner stayed wrapped tight around her. When she was settled, Eramis straightened up and knelt back, stone faced. Tradition dictated that the dead be pointed towards the Great Machine, but to consider doing the same for Praetrak's mother unsettled her to her core. Her head laid looking towards the Milky Way, in the vague direction of Riis. The ancient gods would likely do more for her than the machine-god ever would. To think it would do anything in the afterlife to a species it scorned was foolish. 

Raising her head to watch over the horizon, she waited until the sun began to set, turning the sky pink-purple with streaks of dark blue cloud on the horizon. Stars glittered faint as the sky darkened. Old legends said that every star in the universe was the soul of a dead Eliksni. The story faded over time to be nothing more than a fantasy parents would tell their children, but the timing of a death ceremony stuck. Allowing the dead to see who was joining them was again, the only respectful thing to do.

After a period of silence, she spoke quietly, "I don't know if you were Riis-born, but I hope you find your ancestors there. Our Kells will guide you to them in the afterlife, they will understand."

Searching for the words to say next, she faltered. Usually there was _something_ to be said about a deceased Eliksni. Their achievements would be immortalised in songs or speeches, pulled together and finalised by their crew before the ceremony began at the tail end of sunset. Devils were memorialized for the bravery, their cunning, or sometimes something as simple as their dedication to their crew's cause. Praetrak's mother was a mystery. Without a name to search in the vast database stored on the Ketch, her reputation was lost to time, just as with many other millions of Eliksni. 

"I didn't know you, but I wish I arrived sooner to help you. Parents should _never_ be taken from their own," Eramis sighed, the guilt of doing just that to many in the pacifist settlements weighing heavy on her mind. It was so easy to not think about the consequences and to take it as part of the destruction. A slow feeling of disgust crept up on her as she stayed silent for a few heartbeats longer, dawning on her that the old ways truly weren't sustainable in some forms. The violence was cathartic, but there were thousands more left in the position she knelt in as a consequence. 

"Athrys, my mate…we had many litters together. I was a mother to hatchlings of our own, and kept watch over the other young in my village. She was taken from me in the Whirlwind," the words caught in her throat, wondering if Athrys was watching. "I didn't get the chance to bury her like I did to you. One of our litters grew up without her. But...I will do the same to your pup as I did to my own. Praetrak will be safe with me, and will know your sacrifice. I will teach her everything about our ways as you would have done. And if I cannot, she will be with someone who can."

There were only so many promises she could make, opening her mouth and failing again. On the off chance that the spirits of Eliksni could communicate with the living like some Archons claimed, she didn't want Praetrak's mother to be joining in on her nightmares alongside whatever the Dark could create because she couldn't keep a vow. There was nothing more vicious than that of a mother wronged. She knew from experience.

"Your passing reminds me of the lullabies," her chest seized up, a wave of grief crashing over her. "I will make sure that if she remembers you, that your pup knows that mothers never stray too far, though distant you may be. That she's within your ever-sight, and you'll embrace in night's retreat."

Eramis lowered her head, pricking her claws into her palm to fight back the emotions threatening to overcome. "I make this pact, one Devil to another." she murmured. 

In front of the grave, she could stop for the first time. It wasn't just about paying respects to Praetrak’s mother. It was to pay respects to everyone that was lost while she was alone, with nothing but the stars and the wilderness for company. Every day that she continued to live and breathe took her further away from a time when those she loved could do the same. 

Facing grief wasn’t something she did. It was a sensation to be pushed down as far as it would go, then transformed into whatever was most useful to motivate her. Usually, it was anger, unleashed upon whoever stood in her way. Something about the feeling this time was different. It sucked the life out of her, for it was so unfair that she could give a stranger a funeral, yet not her own closest crewmates. It was unfair that they could perish, yet she was forced to continue with precious little to live for. And all she could do was carry the burden in silence. 

It hit her all at once - the permanence of it. She would never hear their voices again. Never be able to fight by their sides again. They all still had so much to share of what they achieved while she was imprisoned, and now their stories were lost forever. Not only that, but they had so many dreams and hopes for Riis-Reborn and their new lives between them. Phylaks and Kridis were supposed to be her family. A polycule, free from judgement of others. She even found herself considering having another litter, as Kridis preached the importance of protecting the city so that it would one day be their sons and daughters’ to walk through. Taniks was supposed to be safe and receiving treatment for the SIVA nanites eating him alive. Atraks had a life full of hope ahead of her. Praksis would create a great army of scientists and makers. 

In the blink of an eye, it was all gone. Continuing without them made her feel as small as Praketrak was. She wasn’t ready to lose them. And it _hurt_. The Darkness claimed whatever could not hold on to existence was not worthy of it, but she knew no collection of Eliksni more worthy of survival than they were. Yet still, she was its favourite, for reasons beyond comprehension.

Sitting quietly and stewing on her pain until the sun completely disappeared behind the mountains in the distance, Eramis eventually stood. Her limbs felt as if they moved through syrup, every movement a gigantic effort in the face of the overwhelming loss. She sighed, shaking her head to try and force herself to think about something else as she picked up the shovel and began to bury the body. 

Praetrak was her first thought. ' _What am I going to do with her?_ _I could keep her. I'd show her all of this system, all our ways and traditions...No. Not that. That's selfish._ ' 

The pup had so much potential, for better or for worse. In a sense, it was like looking at her current self in the form of a hatchling. A being that had lost everything around them and was left alone, vulnerable, pushed by powers outside of mortal control. As strong as the urge to protect her was, to keep her in a bubble and be raised by a sole provider would be detrimental to her development. Bringing up a hatchling was a commitment and a risk. In the grand scheme of things, Praetrak would mature in a heartbeat. Keeping her would mean carrying double the Ether, double the supplies, and burning through fuel significantly faster. Then came the challenges of raising a pup in the confines of a Skiff. It was difficult enough on a Ketch, twenty times the size of her salvaged runner. Youngsters on Ketches were docked and put to work early in their lives for good reason. 

'I know what you want better than you do yourself,' the whispers hissed. 'Take your chance.’

‘You want to keep her. Do it. Submit the child to your desires.'

'Make her better.'

'Let her feed on your failure and grow in strength.'

She shook her head and blinked hard, a dull ache throbbing inside her brain. ‘ _I’m not doing that._ ’ Focusing on the rhythm of jabbing the spade into the pile of dirt and throwing it into the hole to keep the voices at bay, the temptation gnawed at her. Hatchlings, when they were young and unable to form long term memories and mostly forgetting everything they knew from just a day previous, were like freshly resurrected Lightbearers. Blades waiting to be sharpened.

If she stayed with her, she could teach Praetrak the lessons she had taken an eternity to learn. To place an older head on young shoulders and show her that pursuit of a false god was pointless. How mighty she could be, trained by one of the most feared Eliksni in the Sol system and with centuries of wisdom to learn from in the shadows while nobody was aware that the Shipstealer lived.

The snow whipped away, replaced by the burning walls of the City, smoke and screams thick in the air. Beside her, a warrior, a giant Eliksni in black robes tearing through her enemies and besieging the Great Machine with blade and Stasis alike. In the brief glances she got of her face while she tore through their enemies like she was the Whirlwind given form, she saw it was Praetrak - youthful, yet proven. Far stronger than she was at the same age. 

Misraaks fell before her, the Vanguard crumbled, and Lightbearers fled in fear of final deaths. The Young Wolf raced up to stop them, hands ablaze with solar energy before he was frozen in place. He was shattered, remains strewn and crushed underfoot as they pushed forward.

She stood at Praetrak's side on the outlook of the Tower, raising their swords in triumph as Ketches rained down arc fire upon the once-Great Machine.

'Saviours of your people.' the whispers echoed. 'Stronger together.'

Eramis found herself invigorated. All notion of doubt cleared from her mind. Raising Praetrak into the dark-clad warrior would take years of work, a heavy investment of resources, but nothing felt impossible. For the first time since she found the Pyramid beneath Luna’s surface, everything she desired seemed in such easy reach. "It _will_ be mine," she stabbed the shovel upright in the ground. "Ours. I can provide better for her than I ever had."

The whispers shifted, concentrated less in her mind and instead moving through her body in what felt like a warm hug. The Dark was pleased. Thankful. It didn't need to communicate with words to express its pride. She welcomed it, smiling to herself at her newfound clarity. It was fine to dwell on the past, but one needed to move forwards. Turn the anguish into power, as she had always done and was always right to do. Progress didn’t come from wallowing in one’s own suffering. 

Finishing the burial as fast and as neatly as she could, Eramis marched back to the Ketch with a renewed quickness, understanding the way forward and what to do with her pup. Success was so tantalisingly close - a century or two was nothing, and she had more years than she could count left in her life so long as they could remain hidden. The Devils Ketch was the perfect place to conceal themselves. Just like with her grief, the old traumas could be written over, scored a line beneath, and a new empire built in its place. 

Although as the Dark released its embrace over her and left her to her quiet walk, a little voice in her head said that there was a catch to the proposed path. Details. Kridis would always stress about the little things, because ignoring them allowed the odds to stack against them when they missed something. 

As heavily as she once desired the title of Devils Kell, she was glad to experience Kellship over a House of her own making instead. Life as Kell was deceptively boring. Kells of past, from all Houses, did precious little. They were content to fight their way to the top and then fully indulge in the life of luxury, doing nothing of importance other than being a figurehead. She thought them idiotic, and that more could be done instead of stagnating and relying heavily on their Enforcers to do what should have been their work. 

On Europa, she learned quickly why Kells were so ineffective and idle - there truly was little to do of practical importance, especially when there were no rival Houses to compete with. Anything that needed doing could be assessed and finished in the space of a morning, unless any specific issues arose that required further attention. Equally, the life of pure luxury with no major concerns was startling in the transition from a prisoner who held no rights, to that of a Kell's.

She hated it, oddly. The infallible, overruling power was a wonderful feeling that made everything worth it, and as a once-Baroness of House Devils, not unfamiliar to deal in. The talking and negotiating and pacing around Gale's Watch like a caged rat, because she was Kell and not a builder or hauler, and certainly no longer an explorer or warrior, however, not so much. Shifting the dynamics of how a Kell interacted and related with their House under the guise of the Dark telling her a new way, when it was really a cover for her own boredom, was her only choice in the face of endless monotony.

Mingling with the masses and partaking in everyday activities and entertainment, or lending a hand where one was needed didn't mean betraying her own standards and morals. The Kell was still a ruler, but there was no competition on Europa, and nobody to tell her no. She did as she saw fit, and nobody, save from her Council, questioned it. Anyone who thought they had a chance at upsetting the status quo had no less than four Eliksni to burn through. 

It crossed her mind that if she raised and trained Praetrak so that she could finally achieve her goal, they would face the same problem. Destroying the machine-god would remove most of her issues. Short of border skirmishes or putting down any attempts at revolution from the inside or out, there would be nothing to do. Watching over a city suited in the short term, but to think of an eternity where she was bouncing off the walls, even if her people prospered because of it, sounded unbearable. 

Then there was the balance in raising Praetrak. She had to be a mother, not her Captain or Baron. Some Eliksni chose to do both and enlist their own children into their crews, but she couldn't understand how. It took a special kind of disconnect to one's own kin to treat them with the cruelty and harshness demanded of a typical Captain. She couldn't push her too hard in case she grew to resent her, yet if she didn't push enough they could lose their chance to the oncoming Collapse. Beyond that, assuming they beat the odds, it had to hold that they lived in a perfect world where nothing went awry, or that Praetrak never developed her own thoughts and feelings about the proposed goal. 

Eramkis shoved the thoughts out of her mind. Praetrak would be kept around other Eliksni who agreed with her ideas, there was no possible way for her to learn there was anything different. By the time she did, she would be utterly convinced of their aims regardless. 

Hurrying back inside the Ketch with a quickness she wasn’t fully aware she possessed, she only slowed once close to the quarterdeck. Cautious not to wake her pup by barging in, she crept inside and over to the cabinet Praetrak was left sleeping in. Sensing her approach, her pup yawned and buried herself deeper into the thick fur of her nest, rolling to lay on her stomach so that her back was warmed by the heat lamp.

The wind fell out of her sails instantly. '...I _can't,_ ' she sighed, disappointed in herself. If she couldn't achieve her goal of conquering the City and destroying humanity's machine-god, then Praetrak never would. There was nothing at her disposal anymore to make it reality. Just scattered, directionless Eliksni who fought for a purpose that they hadn't grown up with a personal understanding of, and the scraps left behind from the old Houses. ' _It should all be yours, but I can't let it happen._ '

Slotting a hand underneath her and lifting her up, Eramis switched the heat lamp off and cradled Praetrak close, purring deeply so her tiny body vibrated. There was an ache in her chest, a gnawing, hollow hunger. Looking down at her aroused nothing but a pang of sadness. Some part of her wished that Praetrak was truly her own, awakening an old instinct she thought she had buried. 

She rubbed her pup's head, brushing one claw back through the tufts of dark hair starting to grow on her scalp. She had known her for less than a day, and realized that if any harm came to her then she would destroy entire planets to take her revenge. All the anger and injustices that rattled around her mind calmed to look at her perfections, and her heart softened.

Kridis would have adored her pup. The entire Council, and even the rest of her Lieutenants - Bakris, Piksis, and others - would have been wonderful role models for her to grow up around. She would have been cherished, and never would have known that she was anything else but their own flesh and blood. Again, remembering that they would never see her felt like a smack in the face.

Desiring the company of others was a concept she grew to appreciate with time, but the problem was that there was strength in isolation. Months prior, the whispers took the form of a dark, indistinguishable figure and explained that the motion of the universe was cyclical. Societies would rise and fall from natural circumstances - destruction and re-construction was the basic nature of everything she knew. Nothing could stop the process, nor could it be influenced. 

In the face of her destiny being set, she realized that the endless taking and death was her path in the universe. Her place was to prepare for and attempt to predict what might happen next. Dodging personal connections outside of a select few to minimize the pain when they were inevitably taken was the simplest route, but also the loneliest. 

_'Everything I touch dies or falls eventually And everything I get close to disappears_ and is _taken from me. I learned my lessons on depending on others. This is a child. It can't be depended upon,_ ' Eramis adjusted Praetrak in her arms, grumbling at her in return as she made the same noise. ' _And I can't let her depend on me, either._ ' 

All it would take was a headstrong Guardian taking it upon themselves to track her down and decide to finish her to leave Praetrak abandoned again. Assuming they didn't kill her, too. Briefly, she considered herself lucky she couldn't sleep. She wasn't sure she could bear the inevitable night terror of the Young Wolf breaking into her Skiff and slaughtering them both. If anyone was going to find her, it would be him. 'Mercy' wasn't a word in his vocabulary.

Slowly, it dawned on her that she was afraid of him, and the understanding made her feel an inch tall. Unfortunately, if her place in the universe was to constantly lose everything she constructed, then the Young Wolf’s position was to keep winning despite every adversity thrown at him. Whatever he was going to do, she was powerless to stop. Then again, Lightbearers were 'paracausal' and were outside of the same influences as mere mortals. 

Avoiding him and providing better for Praetrak was priority number one. ' _There has to be a way to extend her life...Unless I give her up to House Light, and let_ **_them_ ** _take her,_ ' she tensed to have the thought pass her mind, a chill like freezing tendrils snaking down her back. The Dark knew all. Trying to avoid and change so-called fate without being a Lightbearer was the work of a coward. In her mind, though, it wasn't cowardly to be realistic about their chances of survival. Everything boiled down to finding the safest routes through the repetitive nature of the universe and its never-ending cycle of destruction.

' _Maybe I could allow them to take me, so that I can raise her._ ' On the off chance she was accepted, the House offered unparalleled security. Wethraks's suggestions seemed significantly more appealing in the context of caring for Praetrak and nothing more, but it would mean pretending to worship everything she stood against. So many would ask questions, and more would relish the chance to take their revenge for what they experienced under her rule. 

On top of that, nothing said that the Vanguard would extend the same olive branch to her as was given to him. Wethraks's criminal record was mostly based in terrorism and theft. Hers, from what intelligence he gained a year or two back, started at violations of the ancient 'Geneva Conventions' and kept going lower. There was no guarantee that her arrival wouldn't prompt her to be captured and interrogated until she gave up everything she knew about the Dark in exchange for some relative immunity, just as they showed her when she went to kill Variks. Simply beginning to consider how they would treat her started her stomach churning all over again. 

She couldn't hide forever, though - with House Light, or anyone else. Someone would poke through Gale's Watch sooner or later and notice her absence. Her job, aside from surviving everything the universe threw at her and ensuring Praetrak was safe, was making finding herself as difficult as possible. Remaining static and hiding in the shadow of everything she scorned was weakness, and the Dark said so many times that that kind of weakness was nothingness.

' _So what if I leave her with Misraaks and take my own path? Is it my duty to take care of her, or am I a messenger?_ ' If the human prophecy was correct and Earth was due to plummet into its own Whirlwind eventually, Praetrak had a chance at survival with them. Both of them did, but the direct presence of the Dark offered up another opportunity to have her taken. It felt distinctly like dooming her to the same fate as what she had experienced in her lifetime. The risk of her pup creating a family and losing everything to repeat the Long Drift, the conquering of a planet, and the devastating losses was too close to home.

'And in Light, there is only death.' a voice hissed in her ear.

Eramis jumped violently, springing herself straight away from the console she leant against and crashing to the ground. She held Praetrak close to her chest, shielding her from harm and scanning the deck frantically for the source of it.

Nobody was there. The quarterdeck was as still and quiet as ever. Glancing downwards, her look of concern met Praetrak's inquisitive one. She stayed still and quiet in spite of being jolted awake, either unaware or indifferent to her surroundings. Learned behaviour.

Eramis clicked her mandibles, frustrated. Above all, she could not live her life in fear of the Dark. Nor could she live alongside it. Doing so was unsustainable for her health and sanity. "No. She goes to House Light, and the only death she will know is that from natural causes.”

Picking herself back up from the floor, she juggled Praetrak and let her climb back inside the sling. She began to dismantle the nest in the cabinet, and while her mind raced with possibilities, fighting against the whispers insisting she forget all concept of House Light so viciously that her head hurt to pay the squabbling too much attention, one thought remained clear. Whatever happened in House Light was going to happen no matter what she did. Everything - becoming attached to her pup, the temptations, the insistence that House Light was going to lead to her end - was a trap. A cleverly constructed one, but years of disruptions from the Dark left her wise.

Praetrak made a keening noise, eyes wide as she swivelled around inside her fabric bundle. The sudden explosion of movement made her nervous. 

"Don't worry, everything is fine," she assured her pup holding up her plush to distract her. Grabbing hold of it, he was briskly brought inside the sling with her once again. "We cannot stay here. You will go somewhere where you can be cared for."

Once the furs and heat lamp were in a heap that could be carried out, Eramis heaved it into her arms and began to walk off the deck. The other objects on the checklist could wait. Next time, she would force Wethraks to come and help her move everything he requested rather than leaving it all to her to remove. Partially out of fear for the Dark's retaliation, but mostly because it was certifiably too much for one Eliksni. 

Before she could push the large lever of the main breaker back up, a beeping stopped her in her tracks. Looking slowly over her shoulder, she stared at the notification marker that flashed on screen, transfixed. "Fitting." she muttered, lowering the furs and lamp to the ground and returning to the workstation. She accepted the message and scanned over the text that came up, 

' **Devils Ketch, we are a band of scavengers searching for one of our own, who went missing during a blizzard five nights ago. Our base is close. We have sent two members of our crew to meet you. They will be waiting and ready for whenever you receive this message.** '

Eramis's jaw dropped, blinking in disbelief. Without a doubt, the message was intended for Praetrak's mother - or anyone who may have seen her. It was a strange place for a mother with child to be, but she had observed far more peculiar living situations that pups had bounced back from without complaint or detriment. Others were searching for her all along. 

She would have to return Praetrak. Every problem arising from her connection to House Light suddenly went away. If she belonged to a scavenging party, then that was her path to take and grow into. House Light would always be there if she chose to live another way and needed safety. Glancing at her to where she settled on her front, she said, "Your friends are waiting. Let's go and see them."

Praetrak cheeped, clinging to her neck as she walked to the front end of the Ketch again. She wondered who had come to recover the lost child, and how she would explain that her mother had died and what had been done with her. Scavengers and nomads were scarcely any larger than Vandals, occasionally led by a Captain but otherwise small in stature and strength. They would be little bother if they took umbrage against her actions, but she had no interest in an argument. If they disagreed, then they would be welcome to dig her out and undertake their own rituals. She certainly wouldn't be accepting any blame for her death, either.

Holding an arm over Praetrak to protect her from the sharp edges of the metal, she squeezed back through the gap in the entry doors at the hangar-end of the Ketch and looked around. A visitor would be easy to miss, and the communication didn’t specify where the two Eliksni would be waiting on her. 

Looking around, she spotted a figure on top of the snow drift, back to her so that only their tattered cloak billowing in the breeze was visible. “Are you searching for me?” she called up to them. ”I received your message-”

"Stop there," the figure turned, revealing a humanoid dressed in armor in shades of silver, white and black. He levelled what looked like a pulse rifle at her, and beside his head his Ghost emerged in an ornate, multi-pointed shell. 

Eramis froze, stomach dropping through her legs in recognition of the drone. ' _The Young Wolf...it was a trick?! How?'_ Despite her fear, she narrowed her eyes. Every instinct told her to run as far and as fast as she could away from him. Instead, she stood tall. "Hello, pawn. I should have expected that you would find me."


	7. Chapter 7

"You're coming with me," he said. "By order of the Vanguard."

"I don't have to bend to your will," she shifted the sling around her body so that Praetrak was at her back, safe from harm. "Imagine gaining the freedom to wield both the Light and the Dark however you want, and yet you still choose to work underneath others. Pathetic."

"We know what we're doing," his Ghost piped up in its usual monotone. "Eramis, it's best if you come with us."

"For what? To live as a pawn, imprisoned? A trophy for your wretched City?"

"You already are one," the Young Wolf replied, his finger shifting to sit on the trigger of his gun. "Don't make this harder than it has to be."

Eramis growled at him, drawing her sword from its scabbard. "I'm no coward. And you and I have unfinished business."

The Young Wolf holstered his weapon and raised both hands. Two bursts of Stasis energy came into his palms to form twin kamas, flawlessly formed. "Try me."

Enraged to see his abuse of her power, she charged up the drift at him with a howl of fury. One kama hurled itself at her head, and she swiped it aside. The weapon crashed into hers, freezing it solid instantaneously in thick ice. Changing her grip on it and ignoring the crystals crawling up her arm, she aimed for his helmet and swung down hard.

The sword shattered, turned to nothing at the flick of his wrist. Overbalanced, Eramis stumbled and tripped down the other side of the drift as the Guardian's foot found the back of her knee, kicking her leg out from under her. She twisted at the last second, landing heavily on her right side and scrambling upright before he could do worse. The joint where metal met flesh twinged, but she forced herself to stand straight and give no ground to him, knee deep in snow. 

Before she could launch herself at him again, the second kama flew through the air and hooked around her lower half. Blue Stasis crystals surged across her legs, locking her in place as it climbed up her shins and thighs. She cried out, lifting the sling up with her lower arms to keep Praetrak away from the ice. It came to a halt at her waist, sealing her to the ground and helpless to do anything but watch as the Young Wolf approached.

He walked casually down the drift, unaffected by the dark power. Against the white snow, wisps of red miasma emanated from his body. Faint crimson dots in place of eyes gleamed behind the black glass of his helmet. Instantly, she recognised it as a wraith, a visage of the Darkness. If it couldn’t reach her by simulating the Kell she knew best, then this was its next attempt. 

Rage filled her heart again, exasperated at the Dark's trickery. "Clever, that you'd deceive me with his likeness," she said to him with a scowl. 

'And a shame you didn't question it. Your lack of faith is disappointing. I showed you a path to glory. All you had to do was choose strength once more,' the apparition of the Young Wolf said, still in his metallic voice. 'The child changed you.'

"Praetrak changed nothing. I was growing tired of your manipulation, and I told you so not two nights ago."

'Seeing what I tell you as manipulation is an error.'

She grumbled in annoyance. Insisting that every negative action it took was in no way a negative was infuriating. 'What do you want from me? A subject to torment? I thought you meant to abandon me when I fought the real Young Wolf."

'I wanted to give you a second chance. Freezing you because you wanted to kill my chosen Guardian instead of focusing on the Traveler might have been premature. But on the bright side, I saved you. Look where it brought you. Aren't you glad for what you've experienced?'

"No," she said sourly. "I buried a mother, dreamt of my own mutilation, rescued an orphan, and you denied me the pleasure of killing Variks. Does that sound pleasurable?"

'Nothing was denied from you, those choices were all your own to make. I just provided guidance and warnings,' he chuckled. 'How strange that you reject me, yet can't stop yourself listening to my instructions. Are you sure you're as independent as you think you are? Where would you be without me? Still pacing around Europa in a prison of your own making, I think.'

"What was the reason you brought me here? It wasn't just to gloat."

'I saw an opportunity that only you would understand fully, so I suppose I'm thankful that you still listened to me. I needed to assess your beliefs, and this... Praetrak, was perfect."

She clicked at him in questioning, unclear on his motives.

'You saw a defenceless child. I saw an opportunity. I killed her mother, and your Praetrak was left alone, crying. Someone had to comfort her,' the Young Wolf shrugged. 'She was no challenge to speak to. A blank slate, as you realized. She has no memories or ideals about what the world is like. She could achieve something beyond perfection with my guidance.'

"If you have corrupted her, I will make it my sole purpose to destroy everything you touch!" she spat.

"Then destroy yourself. Destroy her, as you were going to when you met,' he sauntered around to her back, removing her pup from the sling and holding her out by the scruff of her neck when he came to meet her eye again. 'Go on. Prove your existence is superior. I'll wait all day if I have to.'

She drew her lips back and hissed at the apparition, unmoving. "Cowards use children as bargaining chips."

'Cowards run from powers seeking to help them, because they fear what might happen while holding no evidence. You're like the scribe, seeing only what you think you know.'

"I know that I want no part of a future with you whether it puts the child at risk or not. What happened to 'my own salvation'? Leaving everything but myself behind to continue living? Why would I want the Darkness at my side when all you create is chaos?"

'Not chaos. A road to magnificence. My problem with you, Eramis, is that you speak from desperation. From attachments instead of your own convictions,' the apparition tilted his head. 'I know that you have always been that way, but is this what it took to lay that so bare? To show you a lost child to think of as your own to make you reconsider? Your will is weaker than I thought to be so easily swayed by a being that doesn't understand the world.'

"Then leave me, and leave her. Find another pawn to suit your needs."

The not-Young Wolf sighed. He tugged at the sling over her body, pulling it around the right way and putting Praetrak back inside. 'Pushing me away yet again. I thought that after you heeded my message when you were going to kill the scribe that you might still be fit for purpose. You did so well until you let your emotions get in the way. But you've always been like that. Seeing what needs to be done with absolute clarity until something shakes you and shatters the glass walls you surround yourself with.'

She grimaced. He didn't need to speak of her flaws out loud any further. "You're twisting the knife."

'Maybe I am. I do actually respect you, Eramis. In a sense. To show courage in the face of great hardship and keep fighting when you have nothing. Defeating any opposition standing before you is how you chose to live for centuries. Every life you took showed so much promise - you, of all beings in this system, understood my goal,' he said. 'I can't stop you making your decision, though.'

At a wave of his hand the crystals shattered. His red eyes bored holes into her, analysing her for the final time and ensuring the feeling of thinly veiled hatred was mutual. 'Don't expect me to show you any particular favour when my fleets arrive on this planet.'

She staggered backwards once freed, sliding further down the slope. When she looked up from regaining her balance, the apparition was gone, with no sign that he had ever appeared. 

Eramis exhaled, lowering her head. Her arms shook, releasing the adrenaline from fighting for what could have been her life if the illusion was the real Guardian. In the time it took to pull her thoughts back into order, something stuck out. She heard her own breathing and the noise of her hearts beating. A breeze through the trees. Praetrak's snuffles and the imperceptible shift of cloth moving as she looked up to her and tried to see what had happened.

Pure silence rang loud in her mind.

///

"Perfect, you got everything on my list - and some extra!" Wethraks put the datapad under an arm and crouched down to Praetrak. He crowed at her, "Look at you! That is a Devil if I ever saw one! She's even got the textbook wide face! You're beautiful!"

Praetrak squealed at Wethraks in delight of the attention, although her hold tightened against Eramis's chest.

"You're the largest Eliksni she's seen," Eramis said, sensing her wariness towards him.

"I must be! Does she have a name?"

"Praetrak."

"Praetrak! Hello, our smallest Devil," he cooed, holding one finger out to her to tickle her front. "She's still in the loaf stage, you're not quite out of the oven yet, are you?"

Eramis rolled her eyes at the human slang, although deep down quite liked how apt a description it was. "She thinks she is. I found her in the Kell's nest."

"You should have said I was talking to a Kell. My apologies, _kelekh_ ," he feigned shock and gave her a small bow, to which she giggled. Laughing with her, he straightened back up and looked to the heaving Skiff once more. "How long did it take to get everything in there?"

"Long enough. The 'Young Wolf' interrupting didn't help."

"Yeah, those visions sounded terrifying!" he scoffed a little in disbelief of the entire ordeal, stepping over the first pile of things in the loading ramp to pick through what she found. "Do you think they were lying?"

"I don't know," she answered. "The whispers have stopped, I'll have to wait and see if they come back. I just hope that Praetrak was left alone."

"She must be, how can it communicate with something that doesn't know what it's looking at or doing most of the time?" he remarked, then paused. Bending down, he picked up a broken metal limb in amongst the debris. "Where did this arm come from?"

Eramis snorted, having forgotten it was there. "Variks. Do what you want with it."

Wethraks laughed out loud, setting it to one side for safekeeping. "I bet he's looking for that. Anyway, I think it was trying to test you and saying things for the sake of it to see if it would change your mind. It can't have targeted a child."

She hummed, opting not to focus on the likelihood that the Darkness wasn't lying. It wasn't out of belief that it could find a means to corrupt a hatchling, and she couldn't argue against its conception of finding a perfect target. Children believed anything they were told up to a certain age, and it wouldn't be the first time she had witnessed a pup be indoctrinated into ways of thinking that were ultimately harmful. It wanted her to do the same to Praetrak, after all. 

"You know that I'll tell you if I suspect anything, don't you?" he said

"No, I know," Eramis nodded. She had no choice but to trust him. Nobody else was alert enough, in her eyes, to look after Praetrak. She could have handed her off to one of the budding families in the settlement, but she didn’t know them or what values they held. Wethraks, however, was predictable, and experienced with rearing hatchlings. It was either him, or giving her up to Misraaks directly, and she couldn’t stomach that idea. 

Wethraks brushed his hands off on his cloak and set the datapad down after a few minutes of double-checking what had been collected. "I have something for you, actually. Up the mountain. Praetrak can come."

"What is it?"

"You'll see, trust me," he pushed the Skiff’s ramp up, gesturing for her to come with him once it was shut. "I'll empty this out later."

He led her to a rut in the stone close by, a winding path up into the peaks that cut through the ground. The last time she saw that particular part of the mountain, it was nothing but sheer rocks and shale. She remembered twisting her ankle as she led the charge down its length, a phantom ache going into her prosthetic joint to recall it. 

She didn't think she would ever retrace her steps from the battle. It was going so well, a glimmer of hope in a sea of despair for all the Houses. Arguably, the loss of morale and the loss of life that came out the end of it was far more catastrophic than simply being defeated in the end. She had to do something, and imprisonment for 50 years was hardly a worthy payoff for aiding the Wolves to try and win some glory for her people back. 

"Do you remember the Final Attempt?" she asked Wethraks, curious. 

"Who doesn't? It feels like it was yesterday to me," he replied. "I still say that's the closest I've come to dying when that Sunbreaker chased me. Remember when you all thought I _had_ died and was resurrected by a Ghost, when I was just driven away and picked off the Lightbearers with the highest kill counts on my way back to the Ketch?"

Eramis snorted, vividly recalling that particular debate. "I didn't. You can blame the Barons eager to fill the hole Solkis left behind for that."

"Goes to show how little they knew about me."

"You didn't share much at the time," she said, pulling Praetrak close as the walls narrowed in the ascent. Old blade marks were scored into the stone, present even decades on. The wind funnelling through the chasm seemed to carry faint shouts of triumph and battle cries from the fight, the same that once surged her down the path and into the valley below where the settlement now stood. 

"No, but calling me Risen after I return with all the spoils I did? It was kind of insulting,"

He turned side on to shuffle through a thin gap split through the rock wall. "Squeeze through."

It was too small for herself and Praetrak to fit through together, or even single file. Wethraks's long, lanky frame could manage the space without issue, but she needed another route around. Glancing upwards to the cracks and ridges in the stones, she wedged one hand in a space and made quick work of levering herself up the crevice, climbing over the point where it widened and dropping down the other side. 

Wethraks chirped, "Different."

"Not everyone is as thin as you," she replied, dipping her head and shielding her eyes from the sun where it beamed through the path. "Why do we have to travel this far out?"

"Go and look." he backed against the wall to let her pass, eyes glittering.

Eramis went to the end of the path, emerging into the plateau of a wide, yet narrow canyon. The mountainside fell away into the other side of the steep valley, and at the edge of the cliff was a ship, docked with its engines humming as it hovered in place. Its white and royal blue hull shone in the light to where it hurt to look at directly, dazzling. As hard as it was to discern, she recognised its chunky form immediately, jaw dropping. "My _Ilasan_?! Where did you find it?"

"In a storage warehouse near the Shore. It was just sitting there, someone used it to escape from the Prison and sold it when they were done with it. I thought about buying it for myself, but once you called, I knew I had to take it."

"And it works?"

Wethraks nodded. "Completely. It's been well maintained. The seller was a Devil once, he knew what it was and repaired it. Everyone knew you'd come and get it eventually, so I don't think he wanted to disappoint you in case."

Eramis walked up to her ship and ran a hand over the hull, still warm from the trip to Earth. Memories flooded back to her, and for once all of them were pleasant. She remembered finding the ruined Arcadian jumpship in what was now the EDZ, venturing on conquests against humanity under the guise of being one of their own, and sailing through the Sol system undetected. Bliss.

Praetrak mimicked her, reaching a tiny hand out to touch but falling massively short. She chirruped, wanting to be involved in spite of her size.

Eramis looked over her shoulder to the taller Eliksni, lost for words for a heartbeat. "I can't repay this."

"You already have," Wethraks narrowed his eyes in pleasure and looked down to Praetrak. "I wasn't expecting you to repay it, anyway. Think of it like a gift."

"Thank you," she rumbled her appreciation, touched by his kindness.

"Now, are you _sure_ you don't want to stay with us?"

"Positive. This isn't a home for me."

"Then where are you going?"

"Away. Somewhere where I won't be found," she answered, glancing back at the jumpship and then to Praetrak. "But if anything happens, unrelated to the Dark, I want to know."

"I guessed. You'll hear about everything," he nodded. "Do you want her to know about you?"

Eramis hesitated for a moment before answering, "Tell her my legends when she's old enough. Until she asks, all she needs to know is that her mother passed and she was brought to House Light for safekeeping. When she's ready and if she asks specifically, she should know it was me."

"Alright. I'm sure it won't be long before she does say anything," he chuckled. "And I'll make sure it's kept a secret between us three."

Eramis purred, looking down to Praetrak and blinking at her. Her heart hurt to think of leaving her with Wethraks, but it was for the best. On Riis, pups were raised by the village. Every hatching was celebrated and honoured. It was a community effort to raise them, and considered to be one of the best things an Eliksni could do for others. Family bonds broke irreparably on the Long Drift, giving way to staunch individualism and selfishness over the good of the community. Watching it as an outsider, she had nothing good to say about the change, but Misraaks had given the last flicker of the oldest ways a chance at survival. Within his House, as much as she hated the idea of her growing to worship the machine-god, Wethraks was the best parent possible, and her safety was more important than disagreements over spirituality.

"Come on, little one. Time to go to your new father," she whispered to her, unpeeling her from the sling and cradling her in her arms. "Be good. Don't cause any trouble and make me come back before you're full grown."

Praetrak peeped in response and smiled, appearing to understand. Smiling back at her with a pang of sadness, Eramis held her out to Wethraks and let her jump into his arms. 

Her pup held on to his armor, snuffling around his body and inspecting him thoroughly before deciding he was an acceptable perch. Moving upwards, she nestled into the loose silk of his cloak at his neck. 

"There," Wethraks said, hovering a hand over her as she settled. Once she stopped moving, he added, "She'll be fine, I promise."

"I know," she replied. "She's a good pup. And you've raised litters before."

He rumbled in agreement. "One hatchling is easier to raise than five at once," he replied, fishing in a pouch at his hip and holding out the universal key to her jumpship. It was battered from centuries of wear and tear yet still just about intact. "If you ever get desperate and need somewhere to hide, you know where I am. I always have space in my Skiff. Or I hope I will. It depends how much space our little Devil takes up."

"Hopefully it never comes to that," she nodded, taking the key from him and releasing the ramp to her ship. It slid out from the hull as smoothly as the day she repaired it, clunking against the rocks and digging into the loose dirt of the cliff edge.

"Well. Take care, whatever it is you do. Try not to start any more revolutions." Wethraks joked gently. 

"I don't plan to," she said, bowing her head to him in respect of all he had done. "Thank you, again."

"Don't worry about it. Get going, before anyone comes looking for where I went," he nudged her away. 

Eramis clicked her mandibles in farewell to him, turning away and ascending the ramp. She looked up out of habit and smiled. Marks where Siriks had scraped the horns of his helmet against the ceiling hundreds of times had been left intact. Alongside that, the interior appeared exactly as she remembered it, aside from newly installed screens, consoles and panels. A pile of furs, Ether and other supplies sat secure in the corner, looking out towards the cockpit in a makeshift nest area. 

Resting one hand on the reupholstered pilot's seat, she purred to herself. ' _This will do._ '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't know the significance of Ilasan, check out my other work, Blind Fury.
> 
> Fun fact 2: The section with TYW was THIS close to being Athrys instead. I thought that might be a bit malevolent even for the Darkness. Like sure it works off trauma but all it would do was push her away + make it seem like she was rejecting Athrys, which isn't the case at all.  
> You're welcome for that emotional bullet being dodged, though

**Author's Note:**

> I think I went insane trying to write this. The outline and notes I made on the lore that holds this all together stretched into the realm of ~3k words by itself.  
> Comments and kudos are appreciated after what I went through ;w;  
> This wasn't beta read so if you want to comment on typos....no you don't 💕
> 
> A list of shout outs, in no particular order (all Tumblr users):  
> thefirstknife - for kindly collecting a huge master post on key parts of the lore for the Darkness and advising on how it might handle Eramis.  
> brainplagued - for letting me torture you for weeks 💕  
> mojaveexpress - for general uplifting and supporting of my work, and the support for Praetrak's existence.  
> squibsearching-main - for technically RPing a lot of this out with me and letting me pinch and re-use stuff we wrote for this.  
> aqueousdreamer - for naming Praetrak.  
> All my other Tumblr followers - for liking my posts every time I devolved into insanity while writing this...much love to you all
> 
> Now I swear to God I'm going to write self indulgent things only from here on out. This was too complex.


End file.
